visa and MasterCard are forcing steam and other companies to either remove games THEY don't agree with or be dropped by Mc/visa.
it's just corporate censorship at its finest. credit card companies can essentially tell steam what they are or are not allowed to sell for some weird as fuck reason.
Steam has started banning games that violate certain rules set forth by payment processors and other entities. This includes banks, card networks and...
The weird as fuck reason is steam would no longer be able to take payments through MC or visa. That's an insane loss of revenue. Valve would have to pay a third party to take payments.
That's such an unnecessary gotcha response lol. Obviously they are reliant on those payment processors for their revenue, which is the very reason they are complying.
The point is that those two payment processors essentially run credit card payments in the west, and use that dominance to force their values on their clients.
Collective Shout, an Australian organization lobbies the payment processors to ban adult content from the internet, The payment processors acquiescence to Collective Shout.
Collective Shout is a self-described feminist non-partisan organization, but has alleged ties with anti-trans and conservative organizations. The group has developed a reputation as a sort of puritan crusade that targets everything from Detroit: Become Human to Tyler, the Creator.
Although itch.io has an adult content filter that can be toggled in a user’s settings, indicating whether they want explicit content to be visible in search results and on the store page, the sudden deindexing of NSFW comics, zines, books, games, and other published products on the website means that unless users type in direct links to explicit products, they cannot access them. As is often the case when explicit content is removed en masse, LGBTQIA+, furry, and other content that is considered “obscene” by conservative groups has also been delisted or removed, as reported by The Transfeminine Review. This is especially dangerous in a time when politicians and others in power (i.e. influential billionaires) are actively dehumanizing and disappearing trans people, immigrants, and anyone who steps out of line with the current regime.
I read somewhere that Collective Shout swayed the processors with around 1000 comments. And that because payment processors generally get so few comments that they felt like that was enough to make the policy change. Those of us who do care should probably figure out how to comment and push back. Might not be enough to save what was lost, but we shouldn't let them get away with such an easy win.
Edit: found a thread on bluesky where this is already being organized. Also a link to a change.org petition. Obviously the phone numbers and contact forms linked in the Bluesky thread are probably the better route if you have the time, but anything is better than nothing.
i bet they don't even care they are collecting fees from porn, they have been doing it for the longest, that's just more $ in their pockets. but just trying to please the fascist regime
Just a friendly reminder that Wero is activated in October for online commerce as a European alternative payment method. Fuck Visa, fuck MasterCard, fuck any of these American companies.
Unfortunately, it's currently only in Germany, Belgium and France. Netherlands and Luxembourg will join as well. I can only hope that it becomes a success, so it'll be rolled out in all European countries.
the people who run these companies are so astronomically detached from the average human experience - meaning that tagline might actually be the line of thought they’re predicating this on.
they might say it in corpo drivel-speak, but it’s pretty clear any negative consequences they can think up over the status quo are based in this fear.
Manus is a general AI agent that turns your thoughts into actions. It excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest.
For anyone that might need to hear it. I just installed the flatpak, and when linking it to my Molly app, I saw on the app the option to sync all message history. This is what always bugged me on the desktop client. Seems they finally went ahead to enable this feature.
I think the question is rather, "Realistically though, that is long enough" not just to get the data itself but rather how frequently once needs the data that is older than 45 days old AND who didn't open the client for that duration AND that can not find it on their other client.
It's definitely not impossible... but it's also for most users probably (but that's just my bet from my normal usage) extremely rare.
Why do you need this? I'm curious because I didn't even notice Signal had this restriction. To me instant messenges really aren't something that I'd ever need an archive of.
"safety is certainly a big part of the appeal for many users – so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door." I'm finding that people are irrationally paranoid these days. They see random acts of violence in the news and think it might happen to them but its so statistically unlikely given these are already unlikely events and these people usually middle class people living in nice areas.
Humans are awful at accessing risk and chance, one of the reasons casinos and lotteries thrive.
Look at fear of flying for an example, all statistics say you are many many many times over more likely to get into a car accident on your way to the airport, than during the flight. Even when the ride to the airport is usually short and the flight very long. Yet people are afraid of flying, but not going by car. By percentage, there are of course those, rightly so, afraid of cars as well.
It doesn't really matter how you measure it, number of flights, duration, distance traveled, etc.. No matter which, air travel is by far the safest option. The only other that comes anywhere near is trains. Going by car is bad (though motorcycle is even worse), but so many are afraid of flying that they instead takes the car. Which is among the worst things you could do from a safety point of view.
Risk assessment is probability and severity. The probability can be vanishingly low, but if the severity is astoundingly high then acting like a high risk situation could be appropriate.
Take asteroids. The last planet killer to hit us was 94million years ago. A rudimentary estimate could put the probably as 1:94mil. The severity of an asteroid impact of that magnitude is off the charts, so it is reasonable to consider it a risk and act accordingly to spend resources to search for and track asteroid trajectories.
The severity of abduction, murder, and rape is probably pretty high for most people, so considering it a risk even with a very small probability is not unreasonable.
Location sharing doesn't prevent any of that though?
Like, no criminal who would want to rape/murder/abduct you knows whether you are sharing your location with anyone. They would do so regardless before anyone can arrive to help you.
Also, no kidnapper on this planet is stupid enough to take your phone with them. You have a slightly higher chance for authorities to be alerted sooner but that's about it.
I'm assuming this is a young group, and they've grown up in the always-connected, always-surveilled modern world.
I've met plenty of people that are surprised or even suspicious when I say that I try to avoid corporations and governments tracking me. I guess the Overton window has shifted so that people expect and accept constant surveillance.
As a fairly privacy conscious person, I also expect and accept that it's happening too. I don't think you can be privacy conscious and not accept that. You have to be ignorant to think you can hide it all. I do my best to keep as much data out of their hands as possible though. I don't agree with it.
When I say I don't accept, I don't mean I live in denial, I mean I don't acquiesce; I resist it, whether that be by avoiding services/products, paying for premium, installing ad blockers or modding things to remove telemetry.
I am aware that my phone company knows where I am and I'm on cameras, but I'm not going to make it easy for the next Cambridge Analytica.
It's nothing about trust issues- privacy is just a foreign concept to that generation. It was dead and gone before they were born. They take for granted that eveyone has their phone on them at all times and is never unreachable, so knowing where all your friends are is just a matter of convenience.
I've actually done a little to combat this, in my personal life (apart from ordinary privacy stuff like librewolf und Linux). I got so sick of the majority of my friends expecting me to reply to every text message within 30 minutes, and then getting extremely offended when I didn't (simply because I don't look at my phone that often), that I turned off read-receipts on all my messaging apps, and set my notifications to only arrive in groups at specific times of day.
Then I made a habit of not answering unimportant messages for a few days, until I got the reputation that I pretty much don't use my phone (I also don't use conventional social media, and none of my friends even know I'm in lemmy). This worked like a charm! My social life much, much less stressful.
I've broken the absurd contract that so many people seem to think they have a right to. My time is now my own. I can highly recommend this system! Of course, I can't do it for work-related stuff, but it still really has reduced my stress by a lot.
Like 16-17, I don't talk to the people that do that too much because they're not the type of person I like hanging out with, so I don't really know why they do it.
It's like an extension of their group chats, on snapchat.
I've seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don't remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone's EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we're not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
Exactly. My girlfriend will disappear for an entire day and not come home until 10pm. I usually have no idea where she is or what she's doing (mainly because I forget due to having ADHD), but I don't worry about it because I know she'll never cheat. How can a person even be with someone who they don't trust? Without trust, there is no relationship IMO.
There is the case of the worriers. People who, when not given positive confirmation otherwise, assume the worst. I'm not talking cheating, but like accidents. "He's 5 minutes late, maybe he got in a car accident and died!" It's not healthy, but it is common and isn't a trust issue.That said, my partner doesn't get to track me, and I have no interest in tracking them.
I don't think enabling it is a good idea though. Yeah, they might be worried, but they need to learn to handle those thoughts. Feeding them can only make it worse.
Exactly my thought. It’s nothing to do with jealousy and just kind of convenient if you need to meet up or are seeing if they’re on their way home and can get dinner started or whatever.
Same. We both follow each other and neither of us care. We mostly have it enabled for the “just in case” scenario that anything happens to one of us. We can make sure that we know of our last known location.
I’ve also had her use it one time I was away from home in NYC. And I was too drunk to figure out which subway to take to get back to my hotel. So she walked me through step by step while on the phone with me. It fucking rocked.
I don't know, it's a pointless thing that I just forgot to turn off at some point. I couldn't care less if she knows where I am and sometimes I do what her to know, like when I go hiking alone.
I have my mom's location, and it's good because she just turned 64 (I think) five minutes ago, I need to wish her a happy birthday, appreciate the reminder. But when she travels out alone, sometimes it's nice to know she got back to her hotel without having to bother her about it, so we do the sharing thing. And for hiking alone, sharing your location with someone beforehand just seems like a good idea.
This article is dumb. Location sharing is silly. People will abuse it, and those same people would've found some other way to abuse the trust in their relationships anyway. I had girlfriends as a kid who'd demand calls when I was at a party they weren't at. Dealing with a lack of trust in a relationship is a growing pain.
Further most people don't know they are in abusive relationships even if it is obvious to others around them so the casually dismissive argument "well abusive couples shouldn't use it" is a trash argument.
My point is when people use this argument "Well abusive couples just shouldn't be couples!" it is a way to dismiss the danger of never ending surveillance that makes an INCREDIBLY problematic leap of condemning people falling into abusive relationships to simply suffer, tough luck... and it demonstrates a callous, ineffective and frankly worrying understanding of how abusive relationships formed in general.
I'm still good ta. But it might be ok for the person I was replying too. I assume that there's been independent verification of their claims and we're not just taking them at their word.
Since you're one of the few people that admit to you and your partner using it: What do you think about the company knowing where you are at all times?
I noticed this becoming more common. Young people do so enjoyably. Old people I hear talk about it, it sounds controlling and bordering on unhinged paranoia. Those young people will be old someday too along with whatever sorts of paranoias they develop like all people seem to do
This is dumb. Young couples have been plagued by insecurity long before location sharing. Dial the clock back 20 years and I'm your typical high school boy worried about his girlfriend.
I share my location with my wife, and even some buddies of mine. My wife has seen my location when I was at someone's bachelor party. It has nothing to do with sharing location and everything to do with trust in your relationship. I don't have her location to keep tabs on her. I have her location so we can better figure out how to get our kids from places. I have my buddies' locations so if I end up grabbing a beer, I know who's out and about, or when someone goes to Tanzania, I can say, Joe, what the hell are you doing in Tanzania?
Before location sharing you texted, or you called, or you hit me on my pager, or sent me a letter. Technology isn't the problem, it's -- once again -- just us dumb people being dumb.
What's wrong with giving the spouse a quick call when they're worried about them? Fuck sharing your location, what kind of dumb shit is this? If anything, sharing your location might actually make them paranoid in the first place, as they might try to interpret things in your movement. The hell is wrong with people? I've never heard of this behavior, is this something Americans do?
Yeah, a call. A method of communication that instantly conveys emotions and information, which you can even use while driving a car! How about that ey?
I'll look and see my wife is distant and I'll shoot her a text and say "Grabbing the kids." We each work jobs that take us different places every day (her more than me since COVID), and so we aren't able to rely on some set pattern. I'm able to just see where she is and make a decision. Half the time she's in the car she's on the phone for some meeting and so I can't call. It just makes things easier. I can't fathom why it upsets you so much, but if you wanna chalk it up to America bad, you do you.
It might have to do with how much Americans must work and sit in a car every day I guess. I suppose that sort of workflow makes sense. But then I'll definitely chalk it up to America bad. Thats not a life I'd want to live.
The only time it crosses my mind to check it is when they are coming to visit or we are otherwise traveling or meeting up.
I thankful for whatever makes it easy for me to just be chill about it. It’s nice to not have to manually mess with an app when needed. And it’s there in an emergency.
Edit: oh shit. This reminds me that I saw one of those 360 something ads recently. I usually avoid tv ads, but happened to see one. It was unhinged in how it was stoking paranoia to sell the tracking. It was targeted at parents.
Just treat them like regular people, like you would anyone else, and they'll come to you. Basically, you don't have to hit on them. Just be their friend. Let it happen naturally.
I very much do like the idea of sharing your location (once you are in a committed relationship). Knowing when your partner is coming home or stuck at work or at the grocery store is useful. Same with knowing that someone can check in on you if something horrible happens. And I have 100% shared my location temporarily for that.
The problem is that... you don't always want to do that. And explaining that becomes a mess.
At its core it is opt in versus opt out but it also can trigger the kinds of conversations that are really better suited to a lot later in a relationship. Like with prenups. There are a lot of REALLY REALLY REALLY good reasons to have them but it is the kind of topic that you can't even raise without having the implication of "I don't trust you".
I know several people that do this, but most often it's parents with kids. That's still not an excuse though as there deserve their own privacy. In all cases that I've seen though, it's through Apple/iPhones. Now I'm not saying Android users can't or don't do this, but Apple makes it so easy, that it's everywhere and I hate that.
My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she's often out of the house when I wake up. She's not great at replying to texts. I never know when she's going to be home, and usually have no clue what she's out doing or where.
But I know who she's doing while she's gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.
I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I'm sure if I asked, she'd share it with me, and I'd do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I'm off hiking or something in case there's an emergency, but half the time I wouldn't have a signal anyway.
We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we're both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don't need to know where each other is 24/7
We only share our locations when for example my wife is coming home from shopping groceries so that I know when to go out to the parking lot to help carry the groceries home.
My friend shares her's with me continuously. I do not share mine. I see no point. I don't even know why she shares her's with me. I've only found it a bit useful two or three times over the years. And more of in a "I don't have to walk around this area to find her" way. If I didn't have her location I'd just walk around a couple minutes to I spotted her.
My girlfriend and I share our locations mainly for convenience and safety. It’s nice to know that she’s 3 tram stops away from home so I can start cooking dinner for example. She’s also terrible at responding to texts and calls though lol
Same with my wife. I even have it set up for my mother, so I know she’s safe. I don’t understand what the big deal is, as you say it’s a safety and convenience feature, it doesn’t mean you spend the day looking at the app to see where the other person is.
It’s not something I would do in a casual or new relationship, but if I’m with somebody for years, I value their safety over my (perceived) privacy.
And for the people who think this would prevent or bust cheating: lol. They can just turn it off and complain of bad reception, or leave their phone in their car, while they “shop at the mall”. Or just get a second phone. This app is not a substitute for trust
Regarding tech privacy: it’s not like other apps on your phone are not already tracking, I doubt anybody has their GPS constantly turned off. They already know your location, this one feature doesn’t make a difference.
Secondly, everyone I know my age keeps GPS off unless using a mapping program.
Finally regarding app privacy, people do care about that which is why grapheneos and other privacy focused OS's exist.
The fact that you don't care about privacy and want the government and corporations to have every sext you've ever received or sent doesn't mean that others don't care as well.
that might as well be AI generated. there are no numbers, just some dumb matrix with arbitrary reasoning and now evidence. I'm all for evidence to the contrary, but this is not that
While I can't find any source to back up my claim that it certainly drains some amount of battery, can you provide any evidence that it doesn't impact battery life? Given that GPS uses significant processing power
She could text you, no? It seems like getting her to be better at that is better than opening the can of worms involved with location sharing. For example, here's some bad stuff that could happen:
phone sells that data to advertisers
gov't gets that info and you trigger an alarm (maybe you went hiking a little too close to a sensitive area)
data breach happens and now crooks know when you're not home
SO's creepy friend sees your location and is secretly stalking you
Etc. Those probably aren't super likely, but being able to avoid it all entirely with a little better communication sounds a lot better.
Sometimes it's worth it, like you're going hiking alone or going to a bad part of town.
Lol. I keep telling my partner that I’m sharing my location data with her so don’t need to worry where I might be (Im pretty bad at reporting home unfortunately)
The main reason my wife and I don't have location sharing set up isn't because of trust or lack thereof between each other, but because I don't trust proprietary/commercial location-sharing services.
I've been meaning to set up a self-hosted system (mainly because it seems like Home Assistant could do some neat automations with that info), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Yeah we use it with home assistant, and Bluetooth beacons to turn on the garden lights when we get home, and turn on interior lights if neither of us are marked as home. Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm. Also the person detection camera only alerts us if we aren't home.
Would you mind sharing your automation yaml for the garden lights? I'd love to do more with Bluetooth beacons but don't know enough about how they work to do anything with them.
We have it hidden in the letterbox. The mobile app has a Bluetooth beacon setting where you can have it report either specified beacons to HA, or all of them and you can filter for the ones you want at that end.
The automation looks for the beacon to be reported from either of 2 devices and then switches the lights on, quite basic.
We have a separate automation that turns the scanning for beacons setting in the phone app on at dusk and off at 3am. And another that turns the garden lights off after 10 min triggered by them being switched on
Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm
Make sure it defaults to OFF after power loss. My colleague had a close call when the smart plug with the infra panel plugged in decided to turn on after the power outage.
Find your device and control it remotely. Works over SMS, instant messengers, or FMD Server's web interface. A secure open source alternative to Google's Find My Device.
One of my gf's friends went through a pretty nasty breakup, moved and whatnot and most of her friend group were trying to make sure that the ex and his friends didn't have their location anymore and I'm just sitting here like "its wild that you have to go through that" well a couple weeks later 3 of her tires were stabbed with a screw driver or something, and while there's no concrete evidence that they learned where she moved, I'm still over here trying to get them all to be more conscious about online privacy and location sharing, but nothing works....
Well, I need a reverse proxy or VPN or something so that the phones can connect to my Home Assistant server from outside the LAN. That's the main thing I haven't gotten done yet.
Me an my GF have been sharing location for years now, it has never been an issue and often been handy to see if one of us is driving from work to home or finding each other in a festival or theme park etc.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
In my 8-or-so years of using it with my partner, close friends, and some family, the only occasion where I turned it off was when visiting a jewelry store for an engagement ring.
I know I have less privacy in principle, but I've never had an issue crop up so far.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
Eww this is just weird you have to think about that.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
Also, do yourself a favor and use something open source and/or self hosted. Home Assistant, for example, has the ability to track location data for iOS and Android devices and pin that location to a map. Don't give your location data to corporations to be used for data mining.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup: If you're always prepping your heart and mind for a split, you'll always have one foot out the door. Not everyone will agree with me, but that's how I feel and it's why I don't have one. Find yourself someone who is ride or die, if you are looking for a lifetime partner. Don't settle for someone you can't trust with your life.
That said, not everyone is looking for monogamy for the rest of their life, either, and that's OK, too.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup
I don't agree. Prenups are passive, they don't do anything until not needed. all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
Marriage is different things to different people. Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what. To them, a prenup is an anti-“burn the ship”. It’s a statement.
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust. I’m never somewhere I shouldn’t be, and I like my family knowing where I am, for a multitude of reasons.
There are two types of people who a tracker wouldn’t be effective for: those who are in an inappropriate location, and those who are constantly questioning why someone is in an innocent place, regardless of where it may be. However, at that point, the issue isn’t the trackers; it’s the people.
Nope. That’s only part of it. You’ve flattened the nuance into cliché without refuting the substance. But if that’s what you walked away with, that’s fine.
Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don't have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It's all about safety and convenience. I know when she's working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she's on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.
Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
that's what I meant by passive. they don't do anything until invoked, once.
It's like comparing a personal forcefield with an always worn camera and mic that streams your life to google's personal security subsidiary, if I want to magnify the differences.
I don't see why what you said makes it not passive. maybe we understand that term differently.
Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what.
that's how abusers learn they can do whatever they want
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust.
I don't necessarily mean breach of privacy that way. if everyone voluntarily agrees, without "problems", that's good. but more that the service provider has access to a fuckton of sensitive data! I can imagine people who accept that.. and then who also condemn others for wanting to escape shit privacy invading services
all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
Maybe if one party is unwilling or has no say/control in location sharing but specifically in the scenario at hand I don’t see it.
because you are not sharing your location with each other. you are sharing your location with a greedy company that also lets your significant other, and then the highest bidder access this information. they are doing whatever they please with it to make (even more) money. see, I was so into google's timeline feature years ago. but soon after I realized privacy is a thing I was disgusted of it and turned it off. if you run nextcloud and that addon I don't remember, or reitti, at home and use that, and you keep is somewhat safe*, then it's fine, and I could imagine using that, even just for myself.
I should have explained that. for some reason I tend to assume that lemmy users are privacy conscious, but that's probably not true.
* don't expose the services because your data will get stolen and you'll get hacked by automated systems. run a VPN on the server, only expose the port of that. then you can access the services through a VPN. wireguard is relatively simple, and it's secure.
I get that it’s not privacy focused; so much these days isn’t, but I’m still not understanding how two adults knowingly enabling location sharing via a 3rd party service is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
I’m gathering that your intent was more along the lines of “it’s not very privacy conscious since you have no control over how the 3rd party uses that data or any way to control it”, would that be accurate?
its not "not privacy focused", but it is completely against it. there's almost zero things private about it, only that it's not entirely public. but tbh, at that point that difference would not matter to me
I’m gathering that your intent was more along the lines of “it’s not very privacy conscious since you have no control over how the 3rd party uses that data or any way to control it”, would that be accurate?
I'm not sure I understand you, but my point is that I strictly don't want my location history to be known by such a company. if it somehow still happened, I wouldn't care if only that company or anyone from the public would know, because those who really want to know can get access anyway.
another way to put it: I don't care that my neighbor can have a look at it, because I know they don't care at all, and have better things to do. but in my opinion, if someone cares to check it any time, there's a high chance that their intentions are not good or neutral. of course differences like family, maybe coworkers in very soecial jobs, but otherwise.
The original commenter explained they and their spouse share their location.
You said it was a breach of trust and privacy.
My question was “How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is ‘a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust’.”
I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.
I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.
well, it depends. I still think they are breaching their own privacy, but they just don't care.
Privacy generally means the ability to control your personal information and how it's used, as well as your freedom from intrusion and observation.
If you knowingly opt in it’s not really a breach of privacy. They’re choosing to allow a 3rd party access to that information which doesn’t fit with your preferences but it’s not really a breach of privacy or trust.
they have control over giving that information to the 3rd party, but they don't have any control after that, over how the information is used. with that in mind, do you think they have control over their information?
they are choosing to allow a 3rd party access to that information
that's right, allowing that 3rd party. but did they choose to share it with the business partners of that 3rd party too? are they aware of what is happening in the background? even if they didn't just register-accept-next-next-finish it, most people have no idea about it, because there's so little discourse about it.
like, when I registered to facebook many years ago I had no idea what I was doing. I was using their services a lot for years, blissfully unaware that facebook is a shit company. and what control did I have at the end? the illusion of deletion.
with that in mind, do you think they have control over their information?
It’s not about what I think, they have control over whether to share their location data with a 3rd party or not. By definition that is control. They also have control to stop sharing that data at any time.
Do you have anything to support that the specific system used by the original commenter is using that data in a manner not agreed to when they shared it or in a way that the original commenter doesn’t agree to?
Or are you applying your own personal preferences and beliefs to someone else’s situation?
well if you think your opinion does not matter in a discussion, I may as well just stop responding. especially since with every response you sound more and more hostile. the point with that question was to ask if you disagree. you don't have to say you do, it's clear as day
Do you have anything to support that the specific system used by the original commenter is using that data in a manner not agreed to when they shared it or in a way that the original commenter doesn’t agree to?
you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use. but one of the most popular of such services is life360, which has been known to be doing this for a long time
Life360 Secretly Sells Users’ Geolocation Data to Third Parties, Class Action Claims
This is a bit dated, but the case it not yet resolved. If you search it its still pending and in mediation. Life360 is looking to limit who it sells the info to in order to resolve the case. There is no debate that they were selling the info.
you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use
So you’re applying your own personal preference and beliefs. Saying “all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust” is just you applying your preferences and beliefs to someone else’s personal decision.
especially since with every response you sound more and more hostile.
Do I? How so? You made a statement of fact (all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust) about someone else’s choice and situation without any information to directly support it (you are asking for the impossible as they did not disclose what service do they use).
Calling my questioning and pushback “hostile” seems like bad-jacketing to me. Maybe you’re getting defensive?
My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it's just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I'm out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I'm safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she's still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it's far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I'm doing something sketchy.
We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information.
I was unclear on what I meant by the breach of privacy. there's another comment chain discussing that but tldr: it's not about sharing your location with your SO, but entrusting profit driven careless companies with both of your sensitive information.
Additionally, there's something I haven't written in that other thread. It's not only about the both of you. I as a host (in my house, this does not apply to public places) don't want to have guests who's phones are uploading their visit at my place to any such services, because that also affects my privacy. but it's also a bit weird, because I don't feel I have the right to ask if they have such an app, let alone asking them to turn it off.
so, my point is not about not trusting your SO, but about not trusting random companies, because they are repeatedly showing both neglect and a big tendency to sell user data and lie to their benefit.
This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I'm violating someone else's privacy by doing so. I've also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn't have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don't trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they've taken, and if they're actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people's phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.
what is "this"? location sharing apps? if yes, why do you think these are unrelated?
You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone.
I don't care about a random person having location turned on. why should I? there's plenty of offline uses for that function, I use it regularly. maps, sports tracking, reminders, ...
, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I'm violating someone else's privacy by doing so.
that's ok, when it only affects you. but when you are navigating to a friend's place, with this thinking you are just ignorant about what is actually happening. I'm genuinely sorry to point this out.
this is a bit similar to when people refuse the fact that by uploading a picture of someone to facebook they might be violating their privacy. or when people haphazardly allow contacts access to random apps, or to apps like facebook messenger because it asks so nicely, and then disclaim responsibility over where does that contact information go.
You certainly wouldn't have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don't trust the corporations on the other end,
not just the corporations, but the tech hygiene of the average person. I am aware that it sounds bad, and I hate it that it is warranted.
Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone's house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I'm sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife's Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don't agree and can't take you seriously. If you're arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife's account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don't understand you. You're okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That's a very confusing moral stance.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
My wife and I are the same. Shared location means rather than a message saying "are you on your way home?" you can just check where they're at. If I'm out on a late night callout she can see where I am instead of worrying or constantly pinging for updates. Meeting somewhere? Live updates keeps everyone in sync, and let's you know if you've got time to do something on the way or if they're already waiting or whatever.
People must be in some super unhappy relationships if they see location sharing as nefarious.
This is like, the opposite of old-fashioned. Calling your wife when you're on the way home is old-fashioned.
This article is the first time I'm actually hearing about this idea because it never even occurred to me as something people would actually want to do. I frankly don't see the point of this nonsense. I would much rather talk to my wife on the phone and communicate with her about plans. It's much more human and normal, and facilitates good communication habits. It takes 2 minutes to give my wife a call and, you know what, I get to talk to my wife! We don't need technology invading absolutely every aspect of our lives. We don't need to be constantly plugged in and attached to our phones at the hip.
It also has other downsides, like making it hard to surprise your partner, constant battery drain from the constant location chatter, etc. In fact, it seems like all downside with no actual benefit (setting aside the trust stuff, because it's pretty irrelevant either way).
I get where you're coming from, but I loathe talking on the phone. I love talking to my wife, but we do that when sitting down for coffee and breakfast in the morning.
Isn’t it strange that “trusting” someone now, means letting them constantly spy on you?
I talked to some late teens about it some months ago. They see it as an “I give you permission to see my every move” kind of thing, as in they have nothing to hide. And they do it pretty early on in relationships, as a show of commitment.
I got my SO to turn off location tracking on Snapchat because I got a message from a family member about his location. She had screenshotted his location from the snap map, searched the address, found the person living there, searched him up, found out he’s also gay, and wondered if I knew he was out with another man?! FYI we attended a dinner party at the guys home.
That’s the level of insane some people get. Constant surveillance, mixed with insecurities and stories of cheating, and you’ve got a shitty ass cocktail.
Me having location shared with my partner of 20 years is one thing. But sharing it with anyone else? Fuck no.
I wouldn't even share my location with my SO of 10+ years. Why? They don't need it, and there's tons of potential negative things with that (phone manufacturer sells it, gov't takes it w/ backdoor deals, breach reveals it, etc).
I don't want my SO's location information, and they shouldn't want mine. If I'm doing some high risk activity, like doing a long hike alone, sure, but it's going off immediately after.
My SO gets super jealous/anxious, probably because of all the horror stories in the news. Having access to my location would only make that worse, because then every time I drop a coworker off at home or something and forget to tell my SO, they'll get super suspicious.
I'd much rather work off trust than need to explain every little deviation from my normal schedule just to avoid some anxiety.
My wife always has my location. I regularly go out for hours on my motorcycle and I'll tell her I'm going for a hour ride and get lost in the woods for 3. Years ago I had to call her to pick me up after a truck decided to go left in front of me and shattered my arm into 4 pieces. Caller her from the hospital bed high as fuck on morphine. She has my location so if I stop responding for hours she can make sure I didn't wind up in a medical center LOL.
For real and there's so many people in this thread who have only had toxic relationships or are in toxic relationships, projecting insecurities and lack of trust onto others who may not have these problems.
I don't think this is a good idea for most people, but for some it makes sense and we need to remember that everyone is in different situations.
When you have a spouse that travels a lot, anxiety can get pretty high.
None of the arguments for sharing location relate to cheating. If you are worried your partner is cheating, nothing will assuage your concerns, that is a you and them problem. I don't think for one second my wife would cheat on me, and not because I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread or anything, she's just a good, honest person, and when we have things come up in our relationship she talks to me.
Meh. My location sharing makes no difference to who I DONT want to see my location, your always being watched if u have a smart phone anyways 🤷 turning it on and off is too much effort to be bothered, I got nothing to hide from her.
You know what kind of couples I have known who use it?
Yep. That kind. The constant accusation, constant fighting, constant chaos kind. The same kind who share a Facebook account and all that.
I guess my bias there would be that those would also be the kind of people who advertise it.
I was standing beside an old coworker one time when her husband called, “babe, don’t freak out when I start moving. The boss is sending me to harbor freight to pick up some things.”
I got a call from her in the middle of the night one time, “I’m sitting by the lake and I’m about to drive my car in and kill myself.”
She knew her husband didn’t like me so she thought I wouldn’t call him. Well, I called him. “That bitch is lying. Life 360 has her sitting at her mom’s house right now. She just fucking wants attention!”
Still, I called a friend and asked them to drive by and see. Yep. She was at her mom’s house.
If you just see this and, like 20 others, blindly say "you should trust your partner" then you haven't thought about it at all. If you trust your partner completely, then you trust them to use your location information responsibly, right? So trust does not have any bearing on whether to use it or not.
The issue for me is that we should try to avoid normalising behaviour which enables coercive control in relationships, even if it is practical. That means that even if you trust your partner not to spy on your every move and use the information against you, you shouldn't enable it because it makes it harder for everyone who can't trust their partner to that extent to justify not using it.
On a more practical level, controlling behaviour doesn't always manifest straight away. What's safe now may not be safe in two years, and if it does start ramping up later, it may be much, much harder to back out of agreements made today which end up impacting your safety.
If you trust your partner completely, then you trust them to use your location information responsibly, right?
No. But it isn't about that, anyway. Those apps sell your location data to advertisers and governments, and I'm not installing that bullshit on my phone after I kicked google off of it with grapheneOS.
oh good lord no. years, decades, centuries even couples have trusted each other WITHOUT the need to tracking their where abouts. suddenly this is something we need? no it isn't. but sure, you go ahead and slap a tag on your "loved one" so you know where they are at all times and so will whatever company is selling your data from said tag.
I appreciate the sentiment here, but I disagree with the premise in the first paragraph. It sounds like the age-old "nothing to hide" argument.
I trust my SO with my location information and I have nothing to hide, but I don't provide it because they don't need it. That's it. Why should I compromise my privacy and potentially security just because I trust someone? That's dumb. They don't need it so I don't provide it, that's my primary reason and that should be enough.
I have other reasons too, such as:
I don't trust my or my SO's phone manufacturer to keep that data confidential, and I don't want them selling that to someone
I don't trust my government to steal that information en masse, and I'd really rather not trigger some alarm somewhere
I don't trust most of the apps on my phone with location information, and I'd really rather not trust my phone's app security to prevent them from getting it
breaches happen, and I'd really rather my location information not end up in criminals' hands
And so on. There's no upside and tons of potential downsides, so why do it?
Know when they come home or if they are stuck in traffic
"oh you are still in the store can you get me ..."
security if they get kidnapped
It is insanely useful to know where your partner is. It is not necessary. It is still useful. I would not allow my partner 24/7 location information. It is still useful. I don't trust any app/manufacturer that allows such a feature. It is still useful.
My SO can just call me, and they do about every other day when I'm inevitably stuck in traffic due to some accident during rush hour.
My SO and I call each other very frequently. It takes 10s to call and ask me if I'm stuck in traffic or something. Maybe it takes 5 to check an app, but saving a few seconds isn't worth the unlikely but possible downsides.
Where's the upside vs alternatives that don't have those extra issues?
Is it realy so incomprehensible to see how useful it is? I feel like most people in this threat just close their eyes and scream. Yes you can call, yes you can find a different solution to every problem. But it is still fucking convenient to just know where somebody is without you having to ask them having to actively respond.
Yes, I can see how someone could consider it useful, but that always needs to be compared to alternatives and downsides. For example, the government knowing exactly where I am at all times could be useful if I get abducted or something, but there are so many potential downsides and limited upsides to that to the point that I can't consider it a reasonable option, therefore it's DOA.
So yeah, I don't see location sharing as net useful, especially when the alternatives are almost equivalent in convenience and successfully solving the problem. My routine is the same almost every day, and deviations are really easy to communicate w/ a quick text.
Location sharing is a solution in search of a problem.
It sounds like the age-old “nothing to hide” argument.
It's really not, though. For many couples (including my own relationship), this is something we talked about before implementing. We both decided that since we have the technology, we should use it to our advantage....so we do. Right now we're using Life360, but I've already implemented Traccar (self-hosted and accessed via Home Assistant) for our older kids who have phones (Pinwheel), and I plan on extending that capability to my wife as well, so we can dump Life360.
If everyone consents and you trust the service, I guess that's fine.
I just personally don't see the benefit. My area has a really low crime rate, my kids don't have phones and don't go anywhere on their own anyway (they hang out w/ neighbors or we drive whem somewhere), and my SO and I just go between work and home and rarely anywhere else. If we have a unique schedule, we let each other know.
The only time I think I'd want it is if I'm doing something potentially risky, like going on a hike on my own, which I almost never do. That's pretty much it.
When my kids get phones, I plan to follow the same policy. If they go somewhere, they need to let us know where they're going, who a backup contact is (i.e. if they lose their phone or it dies), and when they'll be home. I don't need to know exactly where they are if I trust them to inform me if plans change.
I ride motorcycles. So I just leave it on by default because my wife worries when I go out. Rightly so. Cagers can be absolute fucking morons.
When my kids get phones, I plan to follow the same policy. If they go somewhere, they need to let us know where they’re going, who a backup contact is (i.e. if they lose their phone or it dies), and when they’ll be home. I don’t need to know exactly where they are if I trust them to inform me if plans change.
Our two eldest kids have Pinwheel phones. I was very up-front about what we can see from their devices on the parent portal side, and what they are and are not allowed to do with them. Their mom (my ex) doesn't like it, but as I'm the one with primary custody and the one who pays for the devices, and the fact that the kids know I'm open about the phones' capabilities, her opinion doesn't really matter. I'm not malicious about it, either; she's just a cunt.
Obviously each situation is different, but I'm very much on the side of trusting kids vs having some kind of leash. Sure, my kids would probably be fine w/ the caveat that I can see whatever they're doing if that means they get a phone, but to me, it also shows that I don't trust them, and that could mean they won't come to me when something I can't track happens. I personally value that two-way trust a lot more than whatever short-term benefits tracking gives me, and I go out of my way to tell my kids what I could do so they know how much I trust them.
So far it has worked out, but my kids aren't teenagers yet (close), so we'll see what happens once their social circle broadens a bit.
My mom the other day sent me like 5 texts in a row because I didn't see them while working. Had to stop and tell her "For the past century, if most people wanted to contact their kids they waited months for letters to go back and forth. No need to panic over not talking for a day."
Privacy is something that I think needs to be actively encouraged. It is a right, and thinks like location tracking are creeping their way into daily life and eroding that right.
No one should have the ability to violate that. And we shouldn't be making it easier to.
And what if you broke your leg and were lying in a ditch while chipmunks were eating your spleen, eh? How would anyone ever find you huh? Bet the egg is really on your face now!
Obviously I have my phone on me so I could just dial 911. If your phone breaks when whatever occurs to you, then your spouse or whatever isn't going to be able to track your location and you're not going to be able to call 911 either. So either way you're fucked.
But what if a T-Rex swats your phone away but gets distracted trying to pick it up with his tiny arms, and forgets to eat you, huh? Bet you didn't consider that likely scenario eh Buster Brown?
Yep. This is one of those hard lines for me. And I feel like it's a red flag for anyone who demands it from a partner.
I trust my partner and they trust me. I actively encourage them to do things without me, because I want them to be an independent person. I want them to have friends that I don't hang out with.
My route has pretty much no stoplights, so there's not really an opportunity to text. But I send a text when I leave and if I'm delayed (i.e. I'll have an opportunity to text).
I don't agree with the practice but I do see the point - it reduces anxiety and gives your partner a sense that you're okay for relationships where trust is strong. For toxic relationships this should absolutely not be a thing.
As far as governments or companies selling the data... You can use some self-hosted services on a de-googled GrapheneOS or LineageOS install and use sattelite location only. Then, pipe that to said self hosted solution that doesn't sell your data like homeassistant or whatever.
Idk, I think it would increase anxiety for my SO, and we have a lot of trust. For example, if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust. But if they just don't see it, they just rely on what we tell each other, and if it's not important, it doesn't need to be communicated and can't create that anxiety.
At least that's my take. My SO is really trusting, but also quite anxious because of nonsense they read on SM and whatnot, so a deviation can create a lot of unnecessary concern.
But yeah, I wouldn't be completely opposed to a self-hosted solution here. I use GrapheneOS, and if the UX isn't too terrible (i.e. easy to toggle off and on), it could be really useful for something like going hiking alone or whatever.
if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust
This means there are still significant insecurities in the relationship that can bubble up and become problems, and you know about these.
You do not trust your spouse to trust you and not misinterpret your intentions.
Paradoxally You can defeat some of this insecurity by being transparent and welcoming misinterpretation if you believe you both have full trust in each other.
As a high anxiety person myself, this works to defeat the anxiety which is often feared of the unknown. By proving that deviations to your routine are not something they should feel anxious about, then that anxiety can melt away.
This kind of shit is pretty common for younger people. I work as a teacher, and I hear students talk about this all the time. I tell them how unhealthy it is blah, blah, blah. My SO tells the younger people at her work "If I had PumpkinSkink's location sharing on he couldn't surprise me with cake from the bakery". She has had more success than I getting people to stop.
My wife and I have each other's locations. We trust each other. We just like having that information available. It's really not that hard to understand.
It sounds like you and your wife have a healthy relationship. That’s awesome! But, for possessive and controlling relationships, surveillance can be harmful.
Personally, my location is shared with my sister. I’d share it with my partner but he is a bit of a Luddite. I wouldn’t be sharing because he asked, I would be doing it so he could find me easily in an emergency.
And, I wouldn’t ask him to share his. If he turned it on and wanted me to have it, that’s cool. And if not, that’s cool too.
Not just couples. I was aghast to learn that my fellow parents at work track the location of their teenage kids. All of them, except me. What the fuck? If I want to know where they are I text and ask.
What's more - half of them also have it turned on in the other direction.
This is crazy to me. I want my kids to grow into adults and I'm not going to surveil them all the time. I think a kid of teen age has some reasonable expectation of privacy. We are close, I have a good relationship with my kids but not THAT close, I don't need to know if you stopped at Wawa on your way home.
We have location sharing enabling via Find My since everyone but me uses Apple. I don't think my wife ever uses it and I only use it as a means of checking they seem to still be alive when they are otherwise late to somewhere they planned to be if I get worried about them.
In years past I would just call them, but this way is less actively intrusive. But people that use it as a spying tool have issues.
Made worse, like they had the info before but now they really have it? They always have it, that's it. If you're concerned about privacy drop the phone, otherwise it's a bullshit argument.
I have my location shared with my wife because while I was working out of the house I got tired of answering the same text message ("how far from home are you so I can start dinner?") every afternoon. She's the only one in the world I have no secrets from, so I just never turned it off. I honestly don't know if she still knows I've got it shared with her.
I'm kind of neurotic and get worried that something may have happened to her while she's traveling, which she does a lot. If she's supposed to arrive somewhere and hasn't I start pacing and biting my nails thinking of all the bad things that could have happened.
We shared each other's location and the peace of mind has helped a lot.
We don't keep secrets from each other. Some folks in this thread see location sharing as a threat, I assume because they are uncomfortable or have existing trust issues with their relationship that are yet to be resolved?
That's really not the type of person she is, or the type of relationship we have. She might well know that I'm still sharing with her, but it's not because she's controlling or untrusting. It would be because she had a reason to check recently.
Yeah, my wife has mine and I know she doesn't use it as often as she could, because I'll get the text, and I'll be like hey, just check the location. Both or jobs take us different places every day (that we aren't home), and so neither of us have a schedule, and so rather than the same texts every day, "When you home," when we're trying to figure out the kids, or dinner, or camps, or I have to go to work at night, or she has a book club meeting, or whatever other myriad things happen every day, we can skip that step. Or we have the ability to, and my wife forgets about it.
Having a shared calendar has been a godsend for us. Honestly we would each probably miss like half of our appointments if my the other wasn't able to say "hey don't you have that thing...?" or "hey aren't the kids supposed to be at that place in twenty minutes...?". I can imagine location sharing makes that even easier because you'd know if it's even possible for them to make it, or if you need to get them ready or whatever.
To me it's weird that people have issues with this. My wife and I, married 35 years, share each other's locations because if something bad happened we would want to be able to find each other. I don't even give a second thought to, "...and I can make sure she isn't cheating on me."
Starting this by saying: Using tracking apps to see what someone's doing 24/7 or worrying about them cheating is insane and is a solid NO, full stop.
But I do understand why people use tracking apps, and I wish we had good FOSS alternatives. A tracking/location sharing app where the trackee can turn it on/off anytime they want (after using a password/biometrics, to prevent others from messing with it), so loved ones can be sure you made it to your destination.
I don't want people stalking their kids, judging their friends for the places they go, surveiling if someone's a cheater, or worst of all, having their data be sold by the shitty companies that run these services.
I've read stories that have scared me and made me wish I could do something like that when I'm out late. I had to (unfortunately) use Live360 during a field trip in another country cause the teachers needed to keep track of us. I understand safety-wise that these apps are vital
I've setup Hauk for my dad to broadcast his location while delivering. It is only activated when he activates it, but it also works if you want to share location with a specific group of people. It has an app and a website, and can be password protected. It also records history and speed, but history can be turned off.
It is not very robust or particularly well coded, but it is a nice little FOSS app that works, but has to be self hosted.
I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren't meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.
I don't have her passwords, she doesn't have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she's doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.
We're apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn't surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you'd be told.
edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she'll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.
It's only vile when you project insecurities or bad intent...
We both know each other's passwords for everything. We use a shared database for it. We both know each other's phone, unlock codes and often through laziness will just use each other's phones for shit. We shared the same bank accounts, we don't have separate money. We share the same vehicles....etc
What's mine is hers, what's hers is mine. Except literally.
We also both have each other's location. What do we use this for? Essentially nothing except when one of us is traveling, or someone is feeling neurotic/worried. The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
We don't hide things from each other, we've explicitly built a relationship of openness and trust, brought on by us actually_not_ trusting each other for a long time. We are completely transparent, and you know what this has helped build? Trust. Know what it has torn down? Insecurities. It's been great.
All they would have to do is turn location sharing off, and change passwords. More likely they would talk about it and agree to split rather than just run off. You know, like adults.
I’m in the same place as you with my spouse, but we didn’t start with not trusting each other. I just never worry about my spouse knowing things about me—I cannot imagine what I wouldn’t tell her anyway.
My spouse has (multiple) physical journals lying around the house. I would never read them—she doesn’t worry about hiding them.
I hope you wouldn't invade her privacy, but I have no problem popping into my wife's Gmail (I'll ask her first), because some camp or school only sent something to her related to our kids that needs to be addressed. And there could be ten emails there from dudes names I don't know and I wouldn't care because I trust my wife implicitly. I would let her do exactly the same, I don't keep my shit on lockdown because I'm worried she'll see my Google search history.
The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
Bless you but the moment I start being afraid of my partner dying everytime they leave the house will be the moment I'm getting back in touch with my psychologist.
I didn't say that I'm afraid of him dying every time they leave the house, you said that.
I'm afraid of them dying when they're traveling 20 hours. Or over a mountain pass. Or various other reasons. They travel a lot and I get worried that's just how it is.
When calculating travel costs, I also dug up some statistics and figured what the chance of crashing, injury and death were based on how much driving we do on an annual basis based on national averages.
I actually thought knowing that would make me less stressed about all the travel but it didn't help because the numbers are kind of depressing.
These same people who are suggesting you live in fear of your partner dying are also afraid their partner might find their porn collection. It's staggering. To describe location or password sharing as "vile" just puts into perspective the kind of people you're talking to.
I knowy wife's phone password, must have trust issues. Or we go on car rides and her phone is connected and the kids want me to put a song on. Should we pull over so she can unlock her phone? Vile.
Too many folks think it's to keep tabs on people, because that's presumably how they'd use it, they'd sit there and watch it.
I'm exactly the same. I get that it's not for everyone. I understand that, and respect it. But I hate people framing this as you having a trust issue.
It's the opposite of a trust issue. I trust my wife to be responsible with my bank accounts. I trust my wife to see my location because I also trust my wife to only bother checking if she has a reasonable reason to do so, and to not be a weird paranoid freak if I'm somewhere she doesn't expect. I trust my wife with the password to all my online accounts because it's easier to just share a Bitwarden than it is to segregate everything, and I completely trust her to not invade my privacy.
The thing is, our lives are online. If I get hit by a bus or something, I don't want her to have to deal with my death while ALSO figuring out how to convince banks and insurance companies and whatnot to let her in. Much easier to just share my Bitwarden with her.
I'm not in some panopticon, worrying "Oh no, what will my wife think about me being within 500 yards of an ex's house" or whatever because I totally trust her to trust me. It's just not an issue.
I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It's good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.
For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don't feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death.
I wa actually thinking about this. After I had a password breach, I wanted to setup a password manager. I wanted something. That I could host locally and access across my VPN. I also thought it would be neat to have a Deadman switch built in to it, where it pings you at set intervals and asks you to just hit a button to confirm you are alive. If you miss a certain number of pings consecutively, then it emails your specified backup contacts and has allows them to access your passwords.
Is this anything anyone here is interested in? Or does it exist already?
Yes we're teenagers. We've been married 15 years, ceremony was when we were three.
Privacy is important, have you never kept a diary? Do you film therapy sessions lest your partner not know what you discussed? Shit with the door open? You don't need justification for wanting privacy, you need privacy so when you have a good reason for it nothing looks different.
What if there’s an emergency?
What if there is? Get help, that's an insane fear to live with. If I am unconscious there's nothing to do anyway, the hospital or whatever will find her details in my purse and call. What the fuck am I going to do, sit there watching the dot on the map and calling 000 if it stops moving? You are a lunatic, we have society to take care of us while we're out and about and emergency beacons if you're like camping beyond the black stump or sailing the Pacific.
My wife has done courses on warning signs for abusive relationships as part of some mental health first aid certification stuff.
2 biiiiiig red flags are insisting on surveillance and not letting people have separate finances. We have a combined account sure, and also pocket money accounts and whatever else. For all I know she's set up a trust. I mean I don't think she has because she'd probably tell me but she has the freedom to do so.
If there's an emergency it will be known regardless. Levels of paranoia that are not justified; how many emergencies have you been in where an Internet connected device is so important in the shortest amount of time? Or at all. No. You might need a phone. But not an app in particular.
And for long term emergencies an fm/am radio is a better tool than the Internet.
I really think you nailed it and that folks here are either kids or never grew out of the high school mentality. It seems like they conflate trust issues with openness, and that you would only share with your spouse because your spouse doesn't trust you.
My wife has my location. My wife has had my location when I've gone to bachelor parties and done bachelor party activities. I doubt she looked at it. When I came home, I told her about things we did because we take an interest in one another's lives.
It really all comes down to efficiency. She's an hour from home and I need to start cooking dinner soon? I'll go grab the kids now and come home and get going. It just helps plan days and nights.
Hi bros. I'm just letting you know about this terrible app called GPS spoofer. Make extra sure you've haven't installed it on your phone by mistake because a lot of apps will download this without letting you know.
I don't want to share my location nor have anyone else's shared with me.
Friends and partners can text "I'll be there in 5"
My friend shares her location with her mother. Her mother then nags her with like "Are you seeing someone new? You're spending a lot of time in north brooklyn now." Like, who needs that, or even the temptation of that?
A tech solution is not going to fix a social/mental problem like fear of cheating.
Hell, my wife generally knows where I'm going when I go out but only because I want to tell her and usually invite her. I'd hate for her to be able to ask why I'm at a restaurant instead of the bar I said I was going to, even if I'll tell her about it when I get home
My partner and I share locations. We check sometimes how far away from home they are when walking the dog, or coming from work. Also handy when one of us "loses" their phone and the other can see it's at home/in the car/at work. But we have trust, and don't need to check where the other is spending time.
You can send it on a one-off basis in Signal. Share location, requested sparingly it can be done but seems like there are bigger issues by the time thats even necessary and coming up regularly
If I'm doing it multiple times a day every day, why not just keep it on. Do you only leave the house once? I know that for some people that is the case, wake up, go to work, come home, all on a nice schedule. That is not the case in our house, not even close, and so it's nice to be able to streamline the process of getting our shit together every day.
Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.
A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄
I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂️
Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They'd all be in each other's shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.
My wife only asked me to 'follow' her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don't cheat on each other - there's enough stress in life without adding to it lol.
Yes, Apple already has my location. Using the location finder in iOS does not share data with advertisers. Also, I spend 99% of my time at my house. Wtf kind of secret shit do you think I’m up to?
Me and my partner share locations. Never once have we done this. It's purely a logistical thing. 10x faster to check someone's location when you're supposed to meet them instead of testing them "wya".
How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.
I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.
We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
but what people are saying is it has little to do with trust: it’s a utility… in fact, the trust is flipped: i trust my partner to have my location, and only look at it for things like checking how far away i am for my benefit
It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
you’re allowed to feel that, but that’s absolutely not true. given the safety and utility aspect, it FEELS to me like if you don’t trust your partner to have and not abuse your location data then you must have other problems
surveillance implies active, constant, and surreptitious… i would not classify mutual location sharing as any of that: it’s passive, occasional, and well-known and consented to by both parties
NO surveillance is truly constant, that would defeat the point of surveillance which is to create the ever present possibility that someone is watching so you begin to subconciously assume you are always being watched.
I'd rather not disclose my age on this account, but, let's just say we're not newly married.
I will admit my statement about location sharing only being a problem if you've already got problems was a bit too binary. The issue is more nuanced.
I see you're focusing on the cheating aspect, which to your credit is what the OP is all about. But from our perspective, that's not even an issue or a use case for the technology. We have full trust in each other. The technology is simply useful for other reasons.
Did she make it to work in the snowstorm or rainstorm?
Huh she's usually home by now, is she unconscious in a ditch or just stopped at the store?
Dinner is almost ready, I just need to put this in the oven so it's ready to come out the second she walks in the door, let me make sure she's actually on her way home. Oh, she must have gotten held up at work, I'll wait a few more minutes.
Stuff like that. Yeah there's other ways of solving those problems, and that's fine too, we just prefer the convenience.
We don't share locations because we don't trust each other, we share because it's convenient. I guess you could say we trust each other not to go crazy with it 🤷♂️
We have married friends who won't share with each other, and that's fine too.
I'll retract my earlier statement. Location sharing is a sensitive subject, with lots of facets. Sharing or not is a personal choice. And while there can be practical benefits, I think most people would agree that using it for cheating prevention is.... Unhealthy.
I don't mind my girlfriend knowing where I am because I'm not cheating on her. The only time it gets a bit weird is if me and my mates are doing something a bit stupid, one time we went to one of those trampoline centres at like 10:00 p.m. because they were having an adult night. We pushed to get massively over excited about trampolines and I ended up getting questioned about it in the morning. But hey she definitely knew I wasn't cheating on her there she just thought I was being weird
We pushed to get massively over excited about trampolines and I ended up getting questioned about it in the morning. But hey she definitely knew I wasn't cheating on her there she just thought I was being weird
This is precisely the insidious part. This is how an innocent self censorship of your privacy begins, with a harmless anecdote like this.
I'm 37 and share my location with my wife. We have kids. It is an efficiency thing that we use to help decide when to begin dinner, who's grabbing the kids, etc. The whole idea of trust issues is just very high school to me.
I have my mom's location. She lives alone. She works in the city. Sometimes I like to just be sure she got home but don't need to bother her about it, or I'm at work late and can't be making phone calls.
Folks with privacy concerns, I guess I accept that. But if you think the only thing stopping the government from snatching you is your location services being off, you're sorely mistaken.
One of the ways I knew my marriage was over, he disabled location services and left them off for months and then years. I followed when I started fucking other people.
Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she's about 15 minutes away, so I'll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.
We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn't laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.
Same. I don’t even recall setting it up until I stumbled on it one day and could track my wife. I pulled a few pranks until I revealed my hand but we’ve never turned it off. There’s nothing malicious about it and we’re both happy to keep it on.
To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I'm pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.
I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I'm not super hard to find anyways
If my partner could check my location at any time, how would I keep bday and anniversary gifts secret? The places where I go to buy things for her are not places I would normally go. She only has to randomly check one time when I'm at an unusual location for her to ask why and then I have to lie. Not worth it.
We use temporary sharing (can limit to one hour) when meeting somewhere. Beyond that, it's a potential liability.
Example: she once got upset that I wanted to go to the mail room (apt building) alone and didn't want her to go with me. She wanted to know what I was hiding. Turned out to be her bday gift and it was just in the commercial packaging with a shipping label. I let her go get it and she's never been suspicious of my motives since (this was at the very start of our relationship and we hadn't established the level of trust that we have now).
Anyway, again, the one-hour sharing is all we need.
Sounds like you guys have some serious trust issues. If sharing your location with each other devolves that quickly, it ain’t the tech making problems.
It's not something I've used very much as I don't have much need for it, but I have used Locus a few times and I'm pretty comfortable with their privacy policy compared to the vast majority of other options.
Let your pals or family know you’re safe. Share your position during your outdoor adventures in real time. Share meeting points. Chat with others in the group. Right here, right now!
When did I ever say that? Why would you just assume that since I said google is tracking your location I just being using an iPhone and thibk that apple is better? Fuck apple and google they both suck. Dont use either of them.
You'll never be able to stop someone that wants to cheat. Best you can do is be funner and sexier than anyone else your partner might be around. Never understood why that's so hard for some people.
That's the gist of the success of my marriage. Even before we met, we both had reached a point of maturity where we were confident in ourselves as single people, and then from that solid base you can build the relationship in a healthy way. We both try to be the best to our partner, while being ultimately independent. These over-jealous people are using their relationship as a crutch for life so they're terrified of it going wrong. Either that or they're guilty themselves and projecting.
When we need to know each others location, we share it via element / matrix. Our own server, so no third party.
Happens maybe four times a year.
(Also, do you just always have location services enabled?? IMO it's a battery drain, I pretty much only enable it for this and while I need to navigate)
Nobody to answer to (and share my location). Despite being somewhat aware of the privacy concerns of having location services always enabled, the potential of having access to finding my phone based on the service to find it (Apples and Googles feature) is more important (to me). Same reason I have cellular always enabled.
Main reason I keep location services enabled is for geo-tagged photos. At first I always kept it disabled because of privacy trust issues (e.g. sharing a picture might not always strip the geotags) but since going on a vacation in sri lanka and being able to trace back a picture to a location it became a very useful feature.
1) It's a tool to be used and it's a good thing to exists and I have it enabled forever
2) Keep a gun pointed at it at all occasions and even if you use it, do so with heavy restrictions
I trust my partner and my partner trusts me but the idea of stalking her via app is mindboggling and, honestly, disgusting to me. Like a dog on a leash, always observed, always controlled. That's some mind disease shit going on. Trust your partner dammit. Ya all have issues.
On the other hand though being violently agaisnt it cuz "oh my god privacy" is also funny. The recipent is your partner. Setting it up for some specific use case shouldn't be a bother. It can be extremely usefull for example for grabbing shit in a mall - if you are not interested in going to the same shop, enable it, split, get what you need, join back, disable it.
What I am getting at is - it's a tool, but an invasive and overly controlling one. Use it how you wish but do not perceive having it on constantly as normal. It literally sounds disgusting.
Edit: For people talking about privacy - we're on lemmy. We all know how tracking works. An even if you have localisation off, your device will connect to local wifi and smart appliances to log your location anyway. So I am not really invested into discusing overall practice of having location on - only on sharing saud location.
And provider of whatever service you use to share your location. Being a bit paranoid about your privacy in this day and age is not just fearmongering and tinfoil-hats.
It can be extremely usefull for example for grabbing shit in a mall
Or communicate in advance that it'll take 30 minutes for you to find your shit and then meet up at a cafe, by car, at lobby or whatever. Live location doesn't add anything to that, assuming it even works reliably enough inside buildings.
My wife and I have our location shared with each other 24/7. Furthermore, my sister also has mine and my wife has her sister's. It has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with safety. Perhaps the real trust is not assuming your partner will use your location to control you.
But that data gets created, so it's vulnerable. Commercial aps on your phone, sketchy apps youve never heard of like facebook, google services, and potentially something from your carrier, plus the government in mosy cases, will have access, phone home, record it.
Then it gets transmitted to your partner somebody('s code) does this. Even if it's e2ee, you need a program to do that, abd the general rule with phone apps is that your data is being sold.
Then it gets to your partners phone, where it is again vulnerable to third parties their apps etc.
Then brake up with her! Why you stay with partner that do not trust you? Yea not everything works perfect inba relationship, but people should allow some space.
That's sort of the irony of it all. People are terrified of being cheated on, because it implies their partner has an attractive alternative they found with mysterious ease. Meanwhile, they're stuck trawling for singles in the gutter.
But it's illusionary. Hot MILFs are not, in fact, In Your Area Waiting To Fuck. Being single, particularly when you're older, is miserable for a lot of people.
a common way to keep tabs on friends, family and romantic partners so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door. In a disappointingly heteronormative and retrograde move, I’m more interested in knowing when he goes out – where’s he off to now? – and set up my own notifications accordingly. Having grown up with the internet, gen Z are, generally, more comfortable sharing their data online; Snapchat, the social media platform notoriously most popular with younger users, has long incorporated location sharing with its Snap Maps feature.
Does anyone even have a private moment at all? Also if I were to cheat I'd leave my phone in a very specific spot if I can. Faux location services may work, but mostly switching to a feature phone seems to be secret trick that shuts down these app fueled nightmare.
Oh, sorry, the battery is down I had to switch to my old phone for a moment! When did we stop having private moments and thoughts? I like tech when it aides me, but recently it has been feeding off my personal time and even some order of thoughts in ways it didn't do before. It almost feels like it tries to fix and set up human emotions in ways that are forced.
Do you want technology to replace normal communication and socialisation skills? Or does it even matter to you that it is what happens now. Remember that only a few years before nobody followed you all the day, and even the internet access was relegated to a computer room. How far have we come from that?
Having public social media can be useful. And it was always possible even before (oh yes MySpace). My issue is having this eternal access as a proof of existance on you all the time. I am fine with the idea of having a public life, what triggers me is the normalisation of surveillance from subjects who never had the concept of being surveillance actors in the first place.
Not to mention, how many abusive partners are already using this feature already? I guess many more than just jealus couples. Airtags had the same problems, but thera are apps to let you spot them, even than they're an invasive technology. Position sharing can be invasive too. Even voluntary sharing is probably worse than we think.
There are few cases where i can think this as a useful feature, like incidents or other unspecified situations.
The one thing that stands out is that this is active constantly. It's not situational. The article doesn't do a good job at detailing the possible abuses of the function but they're there, they were the same with gps trackers and airtags. Gps devices are notoriously expensive relative to these alternatives so nowadays only a certain person would use them.
Do we all really think this is a great idea when fascism and toxic masculinity are catastrophically growing globally like a late stage mestastized cancer?
Do you think enabling all those men to abusively control their spouses is just the forward march of technological progress?
My wife and I have location sharing enabled in case something happens to one of us. We usually don't use it, but its good to have when we need to meet up at an unfamiliar place after something goes sideways for one of us.
But if your SO doesn't trust you enough to allow you private moments and would accuse you of cheating, your relationship isn't based on trust and thus is very weak.
Yes, most sane persons I know have disavowed the entire concept of being with someone else. And archaic leftover of a more dependant age. Now it's just handcuffs with no upside Ending cheating is as easy as ending "being in a couple" and for people who can imagine life without this crutch it becomes more and more foreign why anyone would ever accept such an oppressive custom into their household
Could you explain what you mean by calling it an oppressive custom? Personally, I love being with someone. It has the upside of me getting to enjoy companionship with another human being, and it doesn't feel like handcuffs. Sometimes I have to do things that I wouldn't do otherwise for the sake of my partner's feelings/wellbeing, but isn't that the case in all relationships? Romantic, familial, platonic, or otherwise? If my partner wants me to do something I'm truly uncomfortable with (like allowing them to track my location), and we can't agree on a compromise, I'd just end that relationship and find someone I'm more compatible with.
It's hard for me to express it clearly but you description doesn't seem to include an overwhelming sense that being in any kind of relationship like that MUST also mean a exclusivity of intimacy. Complete with paranoia over whether you will ever violate this hard line and become a cheater.
And I'm not against some people wanting that. I'm against that being the default understanding for almost all sexual relationships, even when the sexuality part dies and then you become a prisoner of the relationship, torn between convenience of staying together and being sexually unfulfilled, forever.
Not to mention all the policing that comes around hunting violators of these pacts. And worse, the societal skewing pushing everyone into these exclusivity arrangements. Where I work, just 20 years ago it was well known that married people favored each other and the promotion were far more likely for married than the celibates. There are often many other forms of incentives, a lot of them financial, disfavorable toward celibates.
These types of arrangement used to be inescapable literally, to the point of many killing their spouses and elites having wars over the right to escape, and still we barely are able to escape the oppressive institution and its demands.
This makes sense. I'm completely on board with ethical non-monogamy. To me, cheating is just when you betray your partner's trust to engage in sexual/romantic behavior with someone else, and what actually count as cheating depends on an agreement between you and your partner(s).
I did see OP respond to my comment and edit it away. If I recall, they said something along the lines of 'it's oppressive for someone to restrict your freedom in forming relationships with other people." And I do understand that point. Like, if my friend tried to tell me I couldn't be friends with some other person, I'd be pretty mad. So why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others that have nothing to do with them?
Well, personally, I'm monogamous, (although I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of an open relationship in some form). I have no desire to be with anyone but my partner, and my current partner feels the same way. I've also been cheated on before, and it felt absolutely terrible. A lot of the pain came from my ex's lies and betray, but it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me. Those emotions of possessiveness and jealousy, even divorced (pun intended) from the betrayal element of cheating would still upset me, I think. Maybe these feelings are just a result of a combination of insecurity and my societal upbringing towards monogamy, but they are still very real to me. So I want a relationship with a partner who will respect my feelings on this matter and do their best to avoid causing me strong emotional pain, just as I would do for them.
To me, it feels more freeing to just not have to worry about my partner getting with other people, and it's well-worth the trade-off of not doing something I had no desire for anyways. I see nothing wrong with this type of relationship as long as everyone involved consents to it. But if others want relationships with complete freedom on what they do with additional partners, more power to them.
why do allow a romantic partner to set boundaries on the potential relationships I could form with others
it also just hurt to imagine him being with someone else and preferring them over me
My problem is exclusivity being the standard or default requirement for almost everyone, in many case just because that's what everyone else is doing.
This deletes, say 95% of the population. It's already a very improbable thing to hook up with someone compatible and have that requirement, unless you have a very high "hook up attempt" rate than you can just forget the whole thing as unrealistic, which I did a long time ago.
It's just not going to happen, no interested, the terms are unacceptable I'm not even going to waste any time trying.
If I was actively sharing locations with someone and theirs just abruptly vanished, I'd be concerned that something happened to them... either share or don't share.
Meanwhile, I often work with immediate risk of death or injury and, by law, I can not be equipped with a panic button for rescue purposes, as it is deemed unlawful surveillance of the worker.
I am supposed to warn in advance what work I will be doing and agree on a reasonable time window for it to be done safely, before having to call in again to say I am not yet dead and if the task is done or not.
My best friend drove me to work the other day. We missed a turn and had to take a detour. Not two blocks after that missed turn, his girlfriend calls him asking where he's going lmao
I would be willing to share locations because I worry about people and don't want them to worry about me, but I'll toss this phone in a Blendtec blender before I install an application that gives some creep in fuckin Dayton Ohio my and my girlfriend's GPS coordinates 24/7. Tasker does the job well enough anyhow
This article constantly reloads and alternates between showing and hiding some warning about my privacy lol. Unreadable.
My wife and I have it on Google Maps. I can't remember why, but we've had it for years. I think my wife worries if I'm safe sometimes. I think I check it less than once a year. I checked it once to see if they were on their way home once, that's about it.
The wiping commands probably wouldn't have worked, but a hacker who says they wanted to expose Amazon’s AI “security theater” was able to add code to Amazon’s popular ‘Q’ AI assistant for VS Code, which Amazon then pushed out to users.
I have to disqualify the SoundMAGIC E80D Digital USB C Headphones because it looks like their 90° plug won't fit with the rather thick otterbox case I have on my phone.
Any other suggestions? Would be using primarily for phone but also for laptop, if that makes any difference.
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who responded 🙂👍Looks like I've got several good leads to follow, so I'd better get started!
To be honest, the standard Apple wired dirty buds are quite fine. according to reviews they seem to have a very good amp and their sound is very good too. You'll pay a bit of Apple tax, though, they cost around 20 €.
I use a separate usb adapter to the earphones. iBasso dc03 has separate usb c cable that I've been able to replace when the original broke. Cheap replacement rather than tossing the whole thing away.
For earphones, I use kefine delci as they're comfortable for my ears and sound good enough. When the cable eventually breaks, a new pair is cheaper and the earphones can still be used.
If you're looking for in-ear monitors, I really, really recommend Crinacle's The Hangout. Dude's a legendary audio reviewer and The Hangout only stocks things that are good to him. Yes, that means that even his lowest-priced offerings are awesome. You won't go wrong at all with anything in that site.
For USB-C IEMs, I highly recommend the Moondrop Chu 2 DSP. It's $28, and phenomenal for the price.
It's basically just his opinion. He started the biggest database of measurements, but he's not going them anymore so other reviewers have replaced him
Also I have heard the DSP version doesn't have the best sound quality. I have another cheap pair of DSP IEMs and they sound better with 3.5mm (DSP adds ringing and noise artifacts)
I bought a standalone $13 USB DAC and it sounds perfect to me
I mean, I'd take the professional opinion of an audiophile with actual tuning experience over ten tech reviewers any day.
Also, I've had no issues with my Moondrop Chu 2 DSP, but if for any reason I don't want the DSP I can just swap the cable out for one with a 3.5mm jack.
Because I'm not physically able to try the IEMs myself before I buy them? I'm not made of money, so I can't keep buying and trying things until I find a perfect pair.
Look, I've bought stuff he has tuned, and I liked them enough to continue buying things he recommends. I also don't mind tuning differences because at the end of the day as long as it still sounds great I'm not fussed.
I got a pair of KZ ZSN ProX that have a removable cable you can swap easily with a USB-C one. I had them for 4 years now and they're really durable: for the price (about 20$) the sound is insanely good and if you spend the extra 10$ for the cable you can plug them wherever you want. Best purchase ever
Starlink is experiencing a network outage, Elon Musk’s SpaceX-owned satellite internet company said on Thursday, with Downdetector showing that the service was down for thousands of users.
The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they're not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.
[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.
The tracking happens even with a big reflector/scatterer on your head, but as long as you dont wear it regularly, the system would have difficulty identifying you from wave propagation alone
I've seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don't remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone's EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we're not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
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Well they can identify you are the same person but not your identity.. So it's like a disenbodied fingerprint.
I suppose they could potentially make some database and train an AI on it someday to match to actual identities, but usefulness would be pretty limited at only 95% accuracy. That's a false reading 1/20 times, so I suspect it would fail bigly to accurately recognize people from large data sets.
Never said that it wasn’t easy, it’s just harder than with facial recognition. In theory you could do it correctly in a way that it isn’t indentifiable.
Also this works in places where faces are protected
I'd imagine it's like online advertisers: they convert your fingerprint to a token to try to sell you shit, but they allegedly don't know who exactly you are or where you go. So visiting animatedllamaporn.com is still your little secret...
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
You'd need fabric with continuous metallic threads that form a complete mesh to actually block the 2.4/5GHz signals - most DIY foil approaches leave gaps that WiFi can still penetrate thru.
I feel like you’re overthinking this. There are people who buy crystal-infused drinking cups to reset their personal feng shui. (Spoiler: it’s just glitter.)
I really wish I didn’t have morals. It’s so easy to make money if you’re willing to fleece people.
I'm generally pro research, but occasionally I come across a body of research and wish I could just shut down what they're doing and rewind the clock to before that started.
There is no benefit of this for the common person. There is no end user need or product for being able to identify individuals based on their interactions with WiFi signals. The only people that benefit from this are large corporations and governments and that's from them turning it on you.
Continued research will ease widespread surveillance and mass tracking. That's not a good thing.
If all you need is presence detection then a motion sensor would be vastly more efficient.
If you actually need identity detection, then maybe, but you'll still have to have a camera or detailed access logs to associate the interference signature with a known entity and at that point you may as well just put an RFID reader under the bowl you throw your keys into or use facial or gait detection.
This kind of thing relies on the fact that the emitter and environments are static, impacting the propagation of the signals in a predictable way and that each person, having a unique physique, consistently interferes with that propagation in the same way. It's a tool that reports "the interference in this room looks like the same interference observed in these past cases."
Search and rescue is a very dynamic environment, with no opportunity to establish a local baseline, and with a high likelihood that the physiological signal you are looking for has been altered (such as by broken or severed limbs).
There are some other WiFi sniffing technologies that might be more useful for S&R such as movement detection, but I'm not sure if that will work as well when the broadcaster is outside the environment (as the more rubble between the emitter and the target the weaker your signal from reflections against the rubble).
Don't think of this as being able to see through walls like with a futuristic camera, think of this as AI assisted anomaly detection in signal processing (which is exactly what the researchers are doing).
Microwave based ground penetrating radar is actually different from WiFi. Also the technology referenced in the link is a motion based body locator, not an identity recognition device.
This is different technology doing different things than what the original article was talking about.
I mean I don't understand this as a lay person, so if it doesn't work then fair enough, but if wifi signals can identify human beings, and pets, when a building collapses better than other methods, or even augment the capabilities already used, then at least there is some benefit from this technique. It's not going to disappear, Genie is out of the bottle now, so why not at least put it to a good use instead of keeping it only being abused by the billionaires and other evil entities.
It's too late now to stop that and I hate that they can do this.
Please don't mistake me trying to find a silver lining as anything other than trying to find a reason that this isn't just another way we are fucked but the science is what it is so out it to better use. It's an interesting capability regardless of how it can be abused, and since we aren't going to stop using the technology we should really understand exactly how this works by using it and making it was beneficial as possible.. Until we were ready to ban the tech, which I have no faith that we will ever.
A bespoke device made to do this, not just your wifi router at home, might as well study it for good praises, or we may if only be abused with little defence against our collective abusers
WiFi uses a subset of the significantly wider microwave band. Ground Penetrating Radar also uses a subset of the microwave band. While there can be some overlap, the frequencies desired for GPR will very broadly based on what you are looking for, what you are looking in, and how deep you are looking for that thing. The wattage supplied can also differ.
WiFi and Microwaves in general are most definitely not the same thing and I will absolutely encourage you to not set up a 1kW 3GHz jamming antenna for your WiFi needs.
Could you use WiFi for search and rescue? Maybe for a narrow set of circumstances, but in almost all situations a dedicated GPR option will be better.
This also won't identify a victim, only revealing that one exists.
First - someone comes up with this. Next, privacy researchers and black/white/grey hat techies come up with methods to defeat it.
Better for surveillance tech research like this to be published out in the open than developed in some secret lab. I figure these researchers are doing more positive than negative by publishing their findings. It's not like if they didn't publish, someone else wouldn't come up with this and possibly use it clandestinely.
When anyone or anything says that their product works "up to x%" I always presume it doesn't really work at all. Christ, 1% is included in that "up to 95.5%" vague bullshit statement.
I believe the reason they had to say "up to" is because the "signatute" will vary day to day ever so slightly (natural weight fluctuation), and if you gain or lose weight it can change dramatically, so the AI would have to constantly consider that and adjust it's records.
Honestly, unpopular opinion, but as long as it isn't very short wavelength RF and they allow for self-hosted/open-source alternatives, I do find it a bit more privacy respecting than cameras, of course they have to say they are using the technology in public places.
It also has it's ways of fooling it, instead of wearing a wig and a false nose, you could wear a carbon-infused silicone fat suit to change the way you interact with RF.
I know people, funded, building WiFi scanners, but for the industry. They are cheap and can scan big stuff but they are quite imprecise, I wonder if you have like to stand in a specific pose on a specific spot for it to work?
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.
I doubt it. You'd need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.
Once you start playing with radiowaves and antenna you start noticing the intricate ways it plays with and around bags of water like bodies. I'm sure the original research on location/movement tracking was due to scientists trying not to get interference, later once they figured it out it was natural to see how much data they could get out of a radio interference profile.
I remember the original tech was going to be marketed as a way to tell if your old person (parent etc) had fallen down and stopped moving. Not the best use case, and then the privacy implications became clear. Once that happens the race begins to exploit the tech.
...But the eventuality here is something like a Star Trek tricorder that can take multiple vitals and detect irregularities from across the waiting room. Sensors that remember who was in a room and what settings they had. Etc. Some cool thing besides the bad stuff (microtarget those ads).
Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.
Cameras require light, while radio waves works almost as well in darkness.
A motion sensor is an extra device that needs to be connected, have power and so on.
There are already radio wave motion- and room occupancy sensors where you can specify zones and so on, but if I could have personalized on top of that I'd take it.
Finally, using a thing for something useful other than its intended purpose is kinda fun.
People willingly provide enough tracking of themselves already
While this could have military applications, the need to generate a profile of the person you want to track makes this less of a concern for your average “carries a phone everywhere” person
Tech companies are always foaming at the mouth to get more data. Yes they know who you are but what do you think, how do you feel, how do you move? The only way to go is to get richer data. This satisfies that addiction. You really think mark Zuckerberg won’t use this against you if he can?
The resulting image must just basically look like a shadow, I can't imagine that they're going to get much internal detail with Wi-Fi considering that my router's signal practically gets blocked by a piece of cardboard.
This research essentially amounts to, humans can be individually identified with nothing more than low quality x-rays. Well yeah, so what, you can also use visible light and in any situation where you're going to use Wi-Fi to detect someone, it's got to be easier to buy a cheap CCTV camera.
First of all: cardboard does NOT block electromagnetic waves. You need a Faraday Cage for that. And even then, it has to have holes of a certain size to block specific wavelengths/frequencies. It’s why you have a mesh on the door of your microwave for example.
Secondly: they’re not attempting to photograph you. Just identifying your unique signature once would allow them to track your location anywhere where they have the gear installed.
EDIT: I suppose your comment is written in a way that it's not clear whether you're saying certain frequencies absolutely require meshes of a certain size to be blocked or if you're just adding that extra detail about the design of Faraday cages for the hell of it. But...
Original comment: It doesn't have to have holes to block radiation. A continuous sheet blocks all frequencies. A mesh is just nice so we can see through the cage or allow air to pass etc.
From the page you linked: "A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material." "... if the conductor is thick enough and any holes are significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation."
My bad, a Farady Shield works just as well and it doesn’t need holes. But I was thinking about ways to combat this while posting and a solution involving conductive fabric was going through my head during that moment.
They explicitly went into the advantages over cameras: - Any light condition (of course IR lighting with IR cameras are the gold standard so this can argueably be met otherwise) - The ability to cover multiple rooms through walls with a device. A sub-10 GHz signal can penetrate most interior walls. People could be tracked without even being able to see a camera and by extension not knowing where to mess with to defeat surveillance.
So perhaps a building takes a picture of everyone as they come in the front door and also establishes a 'WhoFi' profile for that person. They could keep track of their movement through the building while maintaining an actionable correlation to a photo.
You know, this, and the using wifi to see through walls stuff to me just immediately seemed to fall into "don't research this, it can only be used for evil".
I don't get why we bother studying these types of things.
Yeah, like, why learn how to split the atom if all we can do is splode stuff. It's not like we can cure cancer or power things without emitting planet killing gasses or anything.
And this here folks is the true ending. No one there is going to stop it as always.
Congratulations! You are now fully fucked!
There is the draft dodger, he is located in building #52556 in this city, info updated 125 milliseconds ago. He left his phone at his house 5 states away, go get him.
It was very much not even far fetched at that point. 1984 wrote about the same kind of surveillance, and at that time it would have been pretty far fetched. It was published in 1949; the video camera was only 24 years old at that point.
Привет! Хотелось бы узнать, кто из вас уже пробовал использовать Manus - китайский искусственный интеллект? Если вы уже пользовались этой ИИ, расскажите, пожалуйста, каков ваш опыт разработки приложений для компьютера с её помощью? Насколько удобно и эффективно оказалось использовать Manus для таких задач?
Manus is a general AI agent that turns your thoughts into actions. It excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest.
È ovviamente ironico ma, anche per via del mio nuovo Papiellify che mi sta tenendo letteralmente le mani occupate, adesso sto scrivendo meno papielli della roba mia qui sopra… peccato. Ma va bene, suppongo ci sia comunque tempo per scrivere un piccolo aggiornamento, prima di andare a letto… tanto, se già ieri sera ho ampiamente […]
ripaperamento delle pigne nintendiche per mezzo del cartatore (aggiornamenti Papiellify e usi pratici)
È ovviamente ironico ma, anche per via del mio nuovo Papiellify che mi sta tenendo letteralmente le mani occupate, adesso sto scrivendo meno papielli della roba mia qui sopra… peccato. Ma va bene, suppongo ci sia comunque tempo per scrivere un piccolo aggiornamento, prima di andare a letto… tanto, se già ieri sera ho ampiamente ritardato il sonno perché ho come al solito perso la cognizione del tempo a programmare, e la sera prima ugualmente perché dovevo fare gli ultimissimi ritocchi al progetto per l’esame del giorno dopo (…che manco sono serviti, maremma cara), allora stasera posso fare lo stesso dopo essermi liberata dal giogo della carta. 👍
In mezzo a questa tale mia disperazione, almeno, c’è qualcosa di buono da vedersi in come, piano piano, tutti i miei strumenti lavorino sempre meglio tra di loro, e come io quindi mi stia avvicinando in modo sempre più comodo ed efficace ai miei piani finali (purtroppo, appunto, a scapito del sonno, ma vabbé). Avendo solo dal giorno prima fatto pace con la creazione di fogli sfiziosi grazie alla previa creazione di Papiellify, infatti, sono potuta tornare qualche attimo a Pignio; che, tra i tanti motivi, come accennai, è stato creato anche per permettermi di raccogliere materiale relativo a schifezze da stampare, oltre ai meme da ospedale psichiatrico… 🦫
E quindi, ieri sera, in un attimo (…talmente tanto “attimo” da avermi fatta andata a mimir un’ora più tardi del normale, e il mio normale è già tardissimo), ho implementato una cosa che avevo stranamente dimenticato dall’inizio, cioè il listino di singole directory del file system… e, lasciando stare che pure stavolta mi sono accorta solo la mattina in produzione di un piccolo difetto nella app (e ormai, con questo progetto, questo schemino è una certezza, sigh), oggi ho potuto godere meglio di quelle 91 immagini che ieri ho caricato in blocco sulla piattaforma, appunto in una cartella apposita: tutte (?) le carte da lettera di Nintendo Swapdoodle, rigorosamente ottenute tramite screenshot a manina dalla app sul mio 3DS e qui ricaricate violando il copyright (di software oggi non più ufficialmente distribuito)!!! 😍 Quindi, mi sono poi nuovamente messa all’opera sul fronte cartaceo mediato digitalmente, adoperandomi nel tentativo di trasformare una a caso di queste carte da lettera (di cui una gran parte onestamente molto belle e interessanti, e ne godo che ora siano preservate sul mio Pignio) in dei normali fogli per appunti — a dimensione ISO A6, anziché il quadrato di 250×230 pixel che Nintendo ci ha (in)gentilmente concesso, ma per A4 o altro vale lo stesso — e ci sono riuscita. Ho dovuto implementare ancora qualche altra robetta nel fogliatore per farlo, con non poca fatica (e non ho ancora finito…), ma ce l’ho fatta, e trovo sia incredibilmente magico vedere fianco a fianco l’originale immaginetta di dimensioni micragnose e il mio riadattamento — fatto col taglia e cuci, ma pulito, senza stretching… e soprattutto semi-automatico. 😋
E si, stavolta la questione è davvero tutta qui, scusate se è poco; non sto banalmente cacciando fuori magie, bensì sto poco a poco riuscendo attivamente a combattere il principio di Murphy per cui non si può mai fare niente senza che qualcos’altro vada fatto prima. Comunque sia, i nuovi piccoli aggiornamenti che insomma ho fatto a Papiellify (assieme ai tanti ancora non discussi per il Pignio, ma vabbé) sono già online… e ho aggiunto pure il modello creato stavolta alla raccolta dei file: memos.octt.eu.org/m/gnwNvbS4zv… (dovrebbe essere l’ultimo in lista). Quindi ora, forse, posso dormire… ma domani c’è da rilegare questi 10 fogli in un quadernino da 40 pagine, quindi il grind per me non finisce mai. 😵
With the passing of Chuck Mangione at age 84 today, I’m dedicating this week’s Throwback Thursday to the time I played a Mangione chat, Legend of the One Eyed Sailor, with the Jim Ott Brass Ensemble at the 2015 Drum Corps International World Championships
With the passing of Chuck Mangione at age 84 today, I’m dedicating this week’s Throwback Thursday to the time I played a Mangione chat, Legend of the One Eyed Sailor, with the Jim Ott Brass Ensemble at the 2015 Drum Corps International World Championships Semifinals.
“The family of Chuck Mangione is deeply saddened to share that Chuck peacefully passed away in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York on July 22, 2025."
Open up developer console (F12) network tab and reload page/play audio. In the list of network requests, look for something that looks like the resource you want (e.g. in this case, filename: "mp3", initiator: "media", type: "mpeg"), right-click and "save response as". This doesn't work on every site, but works on yours!
Fancier sites do not serve media files directly but fetch encoded chunks of data and recombine them using javascript. To get the whole file back you need to re-implement the javascript, which is what yt-dlp does, but only works for sites it knows how to handle.
For this website, it seems the only way is by fetching the MP3 URL from the network tab (or a random JavaScript file) and passing it into yt-dlp like so:
As the other comment said, if you inspect page html source (ctrl-U) and ctrl-F search for "mp3", the URL of the embedded audio file is also right there in plaintext in the middle of javascript code, but it's merely good fortune that the developer left it easily visible and not renamed or obfuscated in some way. Saving from the network tab works in more cases in general.
You don't need to use yt-dlp to fetch files 😁. It will let itself be used as wget, sure, but the browser is already capable of saving files - that's it's job! Paste the link into the address bar.
Thanks for helping me get this far but now I'm stuck. Neither yt-dlp nor pasting the url into the browser works. The latter gets me the image below, yt-dlp says it's not a valid url
Edit: I got it to work with yt-dlp. I forgot the quotes around the url
Yep! The "save response as" works in more cases because it already includes all the correct cookies/referrers that sites use to protect against hotlinking.
One other thing to try: addons.mozilla.org/firefox/add… (presumably also available for other browsers). Then hold shift while you reload the page, and play the media. Chances are extremely good the addon will catch it and start dancing in your toolbar. Open the addon, click the file you want to download, and it should just download.
Israel is paying to have MAGA social media influencers, with millions of followers, visit Israel to learn how to keep US youth supporting Israel, ignoring Gaza.
The App Store is designed to be a safe and trusted place for all ages, including children. The age rating system for apps and games has been updated in order to provide people with more granular age ratings.
Is it possible to Spoof Android User Agents without rooting? I have found github.com/ray-lothian/UserAge… but it requires rooting. Since I'm using GOS I don't think rooting my device is a good idea.
By android UA I actually meant system wise UA, so that with one spoof all the app installed on the system would recognize my device as the spoofed one, no just the browser
Zelensky earlier moved to subordinate Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bodies to the Prosecutor General’s Office, in what led to large-scale protests in the capital Kiev and other major cities across the country.
Kessler syndrome is about a chain reaction that destroys everything in orbit and keeps us from accessing space for years.
Ruining your view is not "nearly as bad". That makes you sound like one of those folks on Martha's Vineyard, opposing offshore wind turbines that local communities desperately need, because they'll "ruin the view".
Is that accurate though? Assume a satellite is in a decaying orbit (thus too low to contribute to Kessler syndrome on its own) and another satellite is in a different orbit eccentricity-wise but they both collide. Are we certain that none of the pieces from the collision would acquire enough speed to become boloids that contribute to Kessler syndrome?
Time to go down the rabbit hole that is orbital mechanics for me again. Byeeee lol
Edit: looks like the lowest orbit for starlink's first shell is at 550km which is very much above VLEO and would definitely be a factor in Kessler Syndrome.
Most starlink satellites are set to deorbit themselves upon failure to avoid this. However the de orbiting could still fail and then it should take about a year or so to deorbit itself?
So it looks like there is a low possibility of it initiating Kessler syndrome. But it's not negligible.
A year is actually quite a short time (in terms of deorbiting).
As for your previous question yes a collision at starlink orbit could send some shrapnel to higher orbit planes however a majority would be in highly eccentric orbits that would decay quickly on the low end.
The issue would be a starlink collision then hitting something in a higher orbit causing Kessler syndrome in that orbit. The odds of this are still next to zero but never zero.
For your question, no. There's no way for an object to have an orbit that doesn't intersect the same altitude where an impulse happened. They could be knocked into an eccentric orbit, but it at least has to have the lowest point at the highest point of the Starlink network.
This is not to say it can't hit something else after that changes the perigee at a later point in it's orbit, thus lifting it higher. For a single collusion though, no, at least with the collision alone.
You’re off ten fold. They have thousands. Around 5000 with a planned 12k after gen 3 has been fully deployed. It’s definitely a “let the intern push to prod” type of scenario by numbers alone.
Thank you so much ! /s Come and join me where the options are many and the price is so cheap. /s /s
If you'd like to experience what it's like to access the internet sans Starlink, perhaps you could just throttle your modem to 8 or even 10 Mbps. Yes? No? Then consider how lucky you are, and have some empathy for those of us who have little or no alternative.
"I know millions of people use their service because it's the only real option they have, but because it's associated with this one guy I don't like, they can all eat a dick!"
Your options are limited not by random angry dude on the Internet, but by deliberate and calculated lack of development conspired between legislators and telecoms. Starlink will hit the limits imposed by physics and geometry, and then will get worse and worse the more people sign up.
SpaceX sure but Tesla has been in decline for so long that I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the decade it’s either irrelevant or sold off / taken from Musk.
Iris2 and Eutselsat OneWeb are currently massively expanding their network - for European coverage first,though, but with the explicit goal to be a Musk alternative.
Got a nice fibre-optic connection, have you? Try throttling that to <10Mbps and you might understand what some people have to deal with. DSL at 10Mbps from an evil corporation, or 150Mbps from an evil corporation, hmmmmm, what a choice.
It's easy to shit on the owner, but have some sympathy for folk who don't have a reasonable alternative.
I have a place in the boonies and I use starlink. I find it to be vastly superior to the only other semi-viable option, line of site. Speeds aren't as great as they use to be and I'll be happy to change when another better or similar option comes along.
I do experience mico-outages every few days. Like a 1 to 2 second drop that I would only notice with vid chats or gaming.
I do have a media server and surf the seven seas. Starlink is crap for that, so I found a new home for it as I move my residence out here.
I live in a country praised for its IT industry, digital government and whatever
I got off ADSL in 2024. Fucking lol. I don't even live on a farm or anything. Lucky to receive fiber though, now they want to prioritize 5G home connections instead.
My coworkers mom paid $200 a month with a 20GB datacap for HughesNet and couldn't even stream Netflix or Youtube. Their service is completely useless in 2025.
I'm sorry, but not even having a Musk backed product as my only alternative could get me to use HugesNet's antifunctional service. Literally dialup is better.
The West tried to destroy Russia with sanctions, but they failed. Now they are changing strategy. But they need another president for Ukraine for two reasons: Zelensky is the President of war, they need a president of peace, and the time for Zelensky to be president expired.
Lemmy is by default a link aggregator which means users who are browsing posts get 2 things only: - Link. - Title.
From my experience, literally those 25 extra characters could just include that word that can be the word that will give a meaning to the previous 200 characters. Especially that the main competitor for Lemmy (Reddit) allows for up to 300 characters titles.
Overall, it seems pretty essential to give people more context about the link they about to click.
New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism
The very same leadership which was hailed as heroes for years? Who would have predicted that, lol, lmao even. I would expect all the libs to write tankie apology form but alas.
Taiwan is being intensively drawn into the zone of direct control by the United States. Behind the rhetoric of partnership lies a cold calculation, the
Flagstaff
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •FiveMacs
in reply to Flagstaff • • •visa and MasterCard are forcing steam and other companies to either remove games THEY don't agree with or be dropped by Mc/visa.
it's just corporate censorship at its finest. credit card companies can essentially tell steam what they are or are not allowed to sell for some weird as fuck reason.
engadget.com/gaming/steam-now-…
Steam now bans games that violate the 'rules and standards' of payment processors and banks
Lawrence Bonk (Engadget)Mayor Poopington
in reply to FiveMacs • • •GregorGizeh
in reply to Mayor Poopington • • •That's such an unnecessary gotcha response lol. Obviously they are reliant on those payment processors for their revenue, which is the very reason they are complying.
The point is that those two payment processors essentially run credit card payments in the west, and use that dominance to force their values on their clients.
WhatAmLemmy
in reply to Mayor Poopington • • •ShaggySnacks
in reply to Flagstaff • • •Collective Shout, an Australian organization lobbies the payment processors to ban adult content from the internet, The payment processors acquiescence to Collective Shout.
gameshub.com/news/article/aust…
comicsbeat.com/itch-io-delists…
Australian Anti-Porn Group Collective Shout Escalates its War for Video Game Censorship
Amber Warnock-Estrada (GamesHub)MrMcGasion
in reply to ShaggySnacks • • •I read somewhere that Collective Shout swayed the processors with around 1000 comments. And that because payment processors generally get so few comments that they felt like that was enough to make the policy change. Those of us who do care should probably figure out how to comment and push back. Might not be enough to save what was lost, but we shouldn't let them get away with such an easy win.
Edit: found a thread on bluesky where this is already being organized. Also a link to a change.org petition. Obviously the phone numbers and contact forms linked in the Bluesky thread are probably the better route if you have the time, but anything is better than nothing.
Tell MasterCard, Visa & Activist Groups: Stop Controlling What We Can Watch, Read, or Play
Zero Ryoko (Change.org)expatriado
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •Mayor Poopington
in reply to expatriado • • •Oblomov
in reply to Mayor Poopington • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •Saledovil
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •Ibuthyr
in reply to Saledovil • • •GreyEyedGhost
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •MNByChoice
in reply to GreyEyedGhost • • •stoy
in reply to Ibuthyr • • •stoy
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •I don't actually understand why payment processors are whining about what people buy using their service.
It's not like people will go
"Ew, MasterCard, people buy porn with that payment processor, I don't want a card like that!"
𝕛𝕨𝕞-𝕕𝕖𝕧
in reply to stoy • • •the people who run these companies are so astronomically detached from the average human experience - meaning that tagline might actually be the line of thought they’re predicating this on.
they might say it in corpo drivel-speak, but it’s pretty clear any negative consequences they can think up over the status quo are based in this fear.