kodo's recent activity

  1. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    kodo
    Link Parent
    Small tip with massive impact on your Inbox: For years, I had a filter to move anything that had the word “Unsubscribe” in the body of the email to Spam. It may be dangerous to them, perhaps, but...

    Small tip with massive impact on your Inbox: For years, I had a filter to move anything that had the word “Unsubscribe” in the body of the email to Spam. It may be dangerous to them, perhaps, but I find that less than 1% of what goes there is something I needed to pay attention to.

  2. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    kodo
    Link Parent
    São Paulo, Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont are great examples of taming visual pollution. That's a great aspect of it, though I'm convinced the most insidious real estate from advertising is occupied...

    São Paulo, Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont are great examples of taming visual pollution. That's a great aspect of it, though I'm convinced the most insidious real estate from advertising is occupied in our pockets and in our minds.

    11 votes

  6. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    Link Parent
    Just thought of this conversation again as I read both Drew DeVault's post and this article about how aggressive LLM scraping is getting, and the lengths they must go to minimize it. Granted, they...

    Just thought of this conversation again as I read both Drew DeVault's post and this article about how aggressive LLM scraping is getting, and the lengths they must go to minimize it. Granted, they face technical difficulties, but I believe the ethical aspect is not disconnected here, and unveils the scale of the problem at large.

    https://thelibre.news/foss-infrastructure-is-under-attack-by-ai-companies/

    1 vote

  10. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I appreciate your help with this. In my limited experience with this approach, the pages I tested while deploying a very similar tactic were easily parsed anyways by Kagi's Summarizer and...

    I appreciate your help with this. In my limited experience with this approach, the pages I tested while deploying a very similar tactic were easily parsed anyways by Kagi's Summarizer and Readwise's GhostReader. Seems like Claude & co. can also go past this.

    I'm unsure if you are familiar with it, but I also looked into Nepenthes (semantic poisoning tarpit). A bit hard to deploy and likely surpassed soon as well, but an attempt nonetheless. I am considering just blocking everything, even previews, as suggested above, so there is no doubt about the intent. And if just ten people ever reach it, I am happy with that.

    I struggle a lot and already spend way too much time trying to convey the right message and strike a balance. Perhaps my pragmatic solution will be to resort to not even engage with this problem, and so be it. But I truly, truly appreciate your thinking and support in finding sustainable middle grounds.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    Link Parent
    I'll keep experimenting, fine tuning, and failing for us. :) Maybe, one day, I'll ping you.

    I'll keep experimenting, fine tuning, and failing for us. :) Maybe, one day, I'll ping you.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    Link Parent
    That's a good point. Perhaps locking everything takes away any doubt and reduces alienation. The way Ghost works kind of invited, by default and UX, to have a "Preview" section. Very good advice,...

    That's a good point. Perhaps locking everything takes away any doubt and reduces alienation. The way Ghost works kind of invited, by default and UX, to have a "Preview" section. Very good advice, thank you! That little indexing chance that there was would be taken away, but frankly that doesn't matter much, if anything at all, to me.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I understand the "fact of life" perspective sounds like reasonable pragmatism, but I'm not ready to accept a total extractive economy like that. You also can't stop someone from breaking into your...

    I understand the "fact of life" perspective sounds like reasonable pragmatism, but I'm not ready to accept a total extractive economy like that. You also can't stop someone from breaking into your house, but you can make it harder. That's the approach I'm taking here.

    You're right that alienation is a very likely outcome, though it doesn't stem from me directly, unless passive resignation in favor of practicality is the accepted option. Which I believe it is, unfortunately, how the modern Internet became what it is today.

    All fair points, I'm unsure of the solution, if any, are possible. But I'll keep exploring.

    Thanks for pointing out the issue with my ToS regarding Embedly Extract. As you can imagine, application is only to abusers for the scopes we are discussing. I'll think through that, consult with the person who helped me draft it, and reconsider those terms. :)

    1 vote

  14. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    Link Parent
    Thank you for this.

    Thank you for this.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on The antiportfolio: counter-advice for aspiring artists in ~life

    kodo
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I wish it weren't, but here we are. I got in touch with two of the services that ingested and repurposed my writing, although there are more around. The sad thing is: they use RSS feeds as well...

    I wish it weren't, but here we are. I got in touch with two of the services that ingested and repurposed my writing, although there are more around. The sad thing is: they use RSS feeds as well (in fact, when talking with the owner of one of those services as I pointed out that I prohibit that in my Terms of Usage, because I now have those as well...) I was informed that they mostly use Feedly as a directory to find them.

    I also go in and manually remove email addresses from various "AI" services that subscribe only to suck in the posts, which are delivered fully via email. It's absolutely exhausting from any angle. I'm constantly looking for better solutions and I'm open to hearing any and all ideas.

    Edit: You can check the robots.txt - no matter how elaborate, no one respects it in this regard. I found an exotic solution used by 404media.co to create private full RSS feeds, but it's about $40/mo. and I can't justify paying this too just to fight against AI slob machines, and it'd have to be free because it makes no sense for anyone to pay for it.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on Why I make smart devices dumber: a privacy advocate's reflection in ~tech

    kodo
    Link Parent
    Besides Valetudo for robot vacuums, GrapheneOS is a great example for smartphones. OpenWRT is another one for networking devices. Using a Kobo offline with KoReader basically replaces the OS....

    Besides Valetudo for robot vacuums, GrapheneOS is a great example for smartphones.

    OpenWRT is another one for networking devices.

    Using a Kobo offline with KoReader basically replaces the OS.

    Those are not necessarily smart appliances, but still allow to regain control over connected devices.

    5 votes