I was unaware of this. As far as I can understand this is a design for admins who manage fleets and virtual machines, so it’s not surprising it comes from Lennart and systemd. However, even openbsd has /etc/machine-id. Over in bsd land it seems to come from dbus. Is the file a systemd design or a dbus design? Is it something users should be concerned about… probably, but all of computing is a nightmare. Just another fire to add to the fire pit.
And then China rapidly developed to be the world’s leader. Meanwhile the USA continues to burn and Western-democracies crumble, espousing there’s no money for any public-programs. Quality of life degrades materially and education degrades. All whilst the media’s mouthpieces say socialism does not work, whilst the system of communist thought took two countries, in a hostile environment, from backwaters to parity of the world’s capitalist hedgemon.
I unfortunately think it’s true that the majority of a citizenry do not understand the social order/the economy that they live in, nor do they have an interest in it.
And they put people in house arrest, because… ? I just saw tanks being transported on public-roads today. So the reason couldn’t be to covertly move weapons: that goes on in public, in broad daylight and that transit sits alongside vans delivering ice-creams to convenience stores. So, the big cabal wanted to put people under house arrest… to do what?
Pick up a book. Pandemics aren’t new and neither is the orchestrated response to them by governing bodies. History can be a good reference.
It would be funny, if it weren’t true… software is literally clown-world. Bebop boop!~ The computer says we need to do X. Bebop boop!~ We must do X! The computer demands it. Oh look, software owners’ wealth increases exponentially. What a curious thing… Bebop boop!~ Computer says we need to do Y too now. Bebop boop!~ I like following instructions from my computer. Bebop boop!~
It’s practically a religion. Users spend hours per day, silently, head bowed down in supple devotion, waiting for the computer’s next commandments. I can feel it; it’s coming brothers–bebop boop!~
Matrix’s origin is Israel’s intelligence community. One could argue the authors are rebels, being insiders themselves, who’ve begun to fight back against the surveillance state that they intimately know. That’s a naive and foolish thing to think. The project’s design is awful from a ‘privacy’ perspective, with the design specifically allowing third-parties to silently ‘intercept’ users’ data–all whilst still being ‘E2EE’. It’s a feature. That’s the amusing thing about its absolutely shit design, but regardless of design choices, encryption has always been a lagging component of the program.
The cynic might observe that the whole thing was proposed with foresight as to create a compromised leader ready to be adopted by organizations that felt they needed a higher degree of security. Matrix is a good solution, or so government bureaucrats are told.
Let Tel Aviv inside.
You’re right, but I doubt any of them are interested in contributing in any capacity. They just want to continue using Windows, Google and Netflix. Only now, in the year 2026, the absolute monstrosity that is the digital surveillance-apparatus, pokes its tentacles–every now and then–prominently into public-life and some get the willies. Never mind it’s been going on since the beginning of the computer-age. They don’t care. They never did. They enable it and they exacerbate it. They still don’t care.
Your post is a great example of the conditioned expectation that American technology-companies have created. I don’t use this app. I don’t see any ads.
You are correct.
These programs are a waste of your time and resources. It is useless network spam who’s only outcome is to accelerate web-admins to move towards stricter filters to protect their computer resources from such spam.
The concept is wildly broken, because its perception of surveillance is incorrect. It puts too large an emphasis on web-traffic. This isn’t the 90s anymore.
I genuinely want to know what is going on in the author’s head. This is a program for Google’s Android–Google’s Android. It is their operating-system and where a lot of signals are captured. Google sees that you’ve downloaded Fauxx, even if you install it from a third-party (i.e. not from Google’s PlayStore™). They know what time your alarms are set for. They intercept every text message, every phone-call, every e-mail, every notification. If you have Bluetooth™ or other wireless protocols enabled they know what other wireless-signals are around you. They know when you’re driving, when you’re idle, when you’re at work and when you’re asleep.
Clicking on random links isn’t fooling anybody. Sophisticated algorithms look for trends, not one offs ‘hey, this user clicked on an ad for a product sold by Y’. Regardless of how much you think you’re spamming the network Google has access to millions of controls: people the same age, gender, ethnicity and whatever else, to compare against. People who are diligently populating databases with correct data.
I read the f-droid page–before anyone points to the spoofing of location data as some kind of protection–let me put real emphasis on: this isn’t the 90s. This is sophisticated mass-surveillance in 2026 that only increases in sophistication as time goes on. Users purchase increasingly sophisticated mobile-computers that are awake 24/7/365 scanning for an increasing list of wireless protocols which means more data for Google. More sophisticated patterns and algorithms to work alongside and with their national-defense contractors.
Google thinks you’re in the population that might commit political-violence. The NSA, CIA, FBI et al have been notified and now there’s human-eyes on you too, not just the surveillance of unthinking machines. Good fun.
Google doesn’t need a GPS signal to know where you are, where you live and where you work. They have access to a live map of global wifi-access points, cell-towers, Bluetooth™ beacons and a host of other signals. That map is updated daily by all the drones who go though life using their Google Android mobile-computer. Try as one might, this is a collective problem. On one hand it is Google’s mass-surveillance program, but they can only do what they do because everyone else is a snitch for them. A willing snitch. A snitch that believes there is no other way, but to be a snitch. Just try and convince someone not to use Google’s products.
Regardless, for privacy this is a pointless piece of software. You’ll just make Google richer. Those websites and ads clicked on were already paid for. Whether they represent your actual interests or not is besides the point. The transaction already happened and you just made Google minusculely richer. The correct thing to do is to block ad-networks from your network so they never even get loaded.
If you want to protect yourself from Google’s mass-surveillance systems don’t use Google. Use a GNU/Linux mobile-computer or GrapheneOS. To combat the effects of mass-surveillance (that is, the surveillance of you by the masses who do use Google’s products) get political. It seems absurd and a threat to national security that the domestic economy is held ransom by Google and Apple.
I’ll preempt the criticism of GrapheneOS by juveniles who barely have two brain-cells. GrapheneOS only works on Google branded mobile-computers. Ergo buying a Google product would make Google even richer than randomly clicking on Google’s ads, which go for what? $0.0006c USD?
Google’s product isn’t the hardware. It’s subsidized and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was sold near cost (anyone who actually has information about this I’d be genuinely interested in reading). It’s not even made by Google. It’s made by the same factories that makes Apple’s mobile-computers and a host of other retailers’ devices. Don’t get hung up on the branding. Turning off a spigot for Google’s mass-surveillance system is infinitely more powerful than continuing to contribute to it, but with additional ‘noise’ that doesn’t even register.
Outside the domain of privacy I don’t like this idea of spamming networks or loading completely random garbage. At the most benign-end of the spectrum you’re just wasting whatever data-allowance you’re paying for. At the malicious-end you could be contacting malicious-servers (ad-networks are obtusely not in this category, but should be).
Yes. I am just tired, comrade. Once can argue about the tone, but the reality is there needs to be a rectification on computer-education on a scale that only a government can enact. I can not do it. I can just rebuke.
Juvenile views do need to be rebuked. If you believe you can regain a portion of control back via payment to an entity, whilst still living in ignorance of the substrate you wish to increase control over you are a moron. You are merely paying for a belief.
I can not understand the user’s insistence on ignorance. All the users here are aware, to differing degrees, of the abuses that are inflicted on them due to this ignorance, yet there is a crowd who adamantly refuse to use their eyes; they wish merely to do the same things they were doing before, with no change in their own behaviors. They will continue to be abused.
I think the reality is they have no interest in the topic.
I think entertainment is a very low priority. Pushed to comment on the topic I would say it’s actually a great waste of time, regardless of political orientation.
It’s isolating and manipulative. It subverts the local culture and brainwashes the viewer into believing that what is seen often on the screen is a reflection of real life norms. It is not, but when the majority of a citizenry consume so much foreign media it does shift real cultural norms. This is the soft-power of cultural products created for export.
Turn America’s netflix off. Turn off whatever pornography you preference. Move your body. Get some sunshrine and play with your comrades.
I genuinely believe television was a mistake. I can not see anything of its legacy to feel warm towards; there is no good here.
OP, was the article made by AI? It’s such a short read, yet has a table-of-contents, FAQ and too many sub-headings. I won’t comment on AI’s utility, but this is a mess of an article. That’s not a critique of AI–website articles turned into incoherent messes before the public could utilize such software. An observation is that AI cannot stop this degradation, but only accelerates it…
Of course, comrade. Management were previously unaware of their value; this has been rectified and the unmistakable value is now seen!
A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).
No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.
inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.
It’s all nonsense anyway. They’re documents that veil and distract from material-reality. Like privacy-policies. Software-companies all have privacy-policies that detail their pursuit to strip you of privacy, but because they have a privacy-policy they point to it incessantly to claim: a) they care about [their] privacy; b) they have a privacy-policy. It’s even in the name: privacy-policy. Ergo privacy.
Users should be quoting their privacy-policies to mock how they abuse their software to surveil users. Same for terms-of-use documents.
I had the displeasure of reading one of Facebook’s documents. It’s juvenile how they rename terms to sound less insidious. The tracking-pixel is no longer a tracking-pixel: it’s just pixel technology and Facebook wants to highlight their use of pixel-technology to improve your “experience” without ever defining what a user’s experience is supposed to be anyway.
Useless noise to hide and distract with. It’s documentation that attempts to retroactively legitimize their abuses.
You’re an incurious git that thinks you can pay for something contrary to what the market sells. I pay, therefore I believe the marketing material.
A centralized suit of tools sold by one capitalist-company does not make that company a comrade. They fight for their own capitalist-interests and the goal is a market-monopoly that enriches their owners. They are not open. They are not open to inter-network collaboration. They are capitalist and they hate user freedom.
From the drivel you’ve typed Google, Microsoft, et al will ‘meet 95%’ of your needs. “But I pay.” “The marketing material says they’re private.” Are you a child?
Proton: you can have privacy only if you pay us and use our proprietary tools exclusively. Press X to doubt.
You can have privacy now, for free. You’re too incurious to use those tools and liberate yourself though.
Try a thought experiment: Alice and Bob each have computers (super-computers in pocket-form); they also are subscribers that grant them access to the majority of the internet. They want to send each other ‘e-mails’. The market says you can only do that if you pay a third-party (or if you ‘consent’ to electronic-surveillance from a third-party that provides e-mail functionality for ‘free’). Are either option true? How could Alice, with her internet-connected super-computer, send Bob a message to Bob’s internet-connected super-computer. Both computers are functional 24/7/365. Hm… Nope, can’t be done. I need to pay Proton to use e-mail and for my pocket super-computer to have a calendar… oh look, the owner is filthy rich. Learning to use a computer is too hard. Let’s make him richer. Computer users are a joke.
Israel is committing genocide. Israel are harboring war criminals.
Consume the ads like a good corpo-drone. Lobby the unicode consortium to have your emoji added/removed because you have no control over your computer; you have no property. Drone does what the computer says to do. Consume ads. Beep bop.
I concur. From a historical-perspective, rooted in colonialism, drug use was prohibited due to the effect it had on labour’s compliance, even if the use was an indigenous cultural phenomenon. Rather, it made life more difficult for those charged with its administration.
I think the OP is mistaking the propaganda for reality. People generally aren’t thinking about others in any significant way. They just don’t want to deal with an inconvenience so brush it aside by falling back on the propagandized version of reality that is given by the government and corporations. It’s the safe answer and the institutionally accepted answer. Anything else requires conflict and Deborah just wanted to buy coffee and get to her appointment on time, not debate with unhearing television screens, radios, strangers, law-enforcement-drones or a consortium of suited executives. The homeless man was begging on the street due to drugs and a lack of will-power. More importantly to Deborah, he was in her way and was assaulting her senses and cognition. Let the police lock him away.
Homelessness has been increasing here in Australia due to well-understood mechanisms. Those mechanisms have been operating for decades and intellectuals and observers have made critique before. They continue to do so. The issue only gets worse, because it’s by design. It’s the political class’ blueprint and things are working as they should be.
The council would rather pay to have infrastructure torn up, such as the removal of public benches from public property, because the homeless sleep on them and that is unsightly. The fact that the cost would have tripled to have it installed, removed and (presumably) re-installed once the homeless issue was resolved isn’t true, because there is no resolutions to hinder the advance of homelessness.
Drugs are a class issue. The labourer is not to indulge in them. The other classes are free to do so within a limit. The demands of industrial society have influenced what that limit is, but there is a clear distinction between the classes. When a lawyer indulges in cocaine and it’s made into a public-spectacle the media report about the immense stress placed on lawyers. When the labourer makes a drug-induced public-spectacle the media report on the moral failings of the labouring class and how they must be better controlled.
None of it is coherent and the ruling class don’t care. If you’re interested in the intersection of drugs and morality, especially if your background is from a Catholic or Christian cult, I’d snarkily implore you to read their histories and the documented drug use of these cults that underpin Western-democratic morality codes. There’s a reason the Bible is like a fever-dream of a druggie, because it is one. The needs of capitalism, of regimented time-controlled labour, now prohibits such use and the priest class pivot to create a narrative of why it is so, even if their documented legacy shows them to be lieing dogs.
Drugs are an inseparable part of the human experience. Have fun; look after each other and listen to your elders’ advice. I’d caution that the cultural ceremonies that had implemented recreational drug use have been obliterated from living memory for some social groups and we now find ourselves in societies that mass-produce novel drugs. It’s uncharted territory in one sense.