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26 votes
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Tim Berners-Lee: We need social networks where bad things happen less
10 votes -
Clubhouse cured my imposter syndrome
8 votes -
Adobe Photoshop’s ‘Super Resolution’ made my jaw hit the floor
22 votes -
Privacy is a commons
3 votes -
On NFTs: They're just a different database
9 votes -
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation
10 votes -
Seeking to capitalize on a growing population that is increasingly less poor, American and Chinese tech giants clash in Africa
5 votes -
The Netflix password-sharing crackdown has begun
18 votes -
Hackers break into thousands of security cameras, exposing Tesla, jails, hospitals
16 votes -
Asahi Linux (Linux on Apple Silicon) progress report: January / February 2021
9 votes -
OpenHW Group and Mitacs announce a $22.5M research program for open-source processors
4 votes -
Hosting company OVH had a fire at their Strasbourg, France data center last night, completely destroying the "SBG2" location and damaging others
31 votes -
Reddit hires its first chief financial officer as it prepares for an IPO
31 votes -
History of 4chan
7 votes -
Google’s FLoC is a terrible idea
31 votes -
The Amazon Assistant browser extension requires extensive permissions, has the capabilities to monitor and manipulate all of its users' web activity, and seems to violate multiple browsers' policies
11 votes -
Urbit: A Personal Identity Server
6 votes -
Signal's server repo hasn't been updated since April 2020
26 votes -
The internet doesn't have to be awful
8 votes -
Why popular YouTubers are building their own sites
17 votes -
Salma talks about her non-traditional journey into tech and DevRel - a story about building a tech career
2 votes -
Ubuntu sends http requests to Google cloud, here’s a fix
Ubuntu has this package installed by default: network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntu It's only purpose is to provide settings for NetworkManager to send requests to...
Ubuntu has this package installed by default:
network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntuIt's only purpose is to provide settings for NetworkManager to send requests to connectivity-check.ubuntu.com , and based on the result (AFAIK) detect redirection by captive portals and open an ISP's page (think public WiFi, or hotel rooms, where you need to authorize to access the net).
Well, connectivity-check.ubuntu.com is hosted on Google cloud (you can check that by running:
dig connectivity-check.ubuntu.com whois [the IP from previous query]
), so by default Ubuntu sends requests to a Google cloud page.
I don't say Google counts daily active Ubuntu users (because many of those have the same IP), or that Google actively logs and analyzes that data. But some of you guys may not like that behavior.So what's the fix?
Purge the package
sudo apt purge network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntu
If you do need a captive portal detection, create your own config file to query some HTTP (not HTTPS) page of your choice, in the example below I have a Debian page used for the same purpose. Use your favorite text editor to create and edit /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/90-connectivity-custom.conf :
[connectivity] uri=http://network-test.debian.org/nm
Restart NetworkManager
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager
If you run an Ubuntu derivative, please report if you have network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntu installed in the comments.
11 votes -
The small web is beautiful
23 votes -
History of dunking culture's transformation into the alt right, the reputation of Tumblr
15 votes -
The secret life of components
7 votes -
HTTP is fundamental to modern development. But like any widespread mature standard, it's got some funky skeletons in the closet.
9 votes -
Jack Dorsey: Bids reach $2.5m for Twitter co-founder's first post
8 votes -
At least 30,000 US organizations newly hacked via holes in Microsoft’s email software
19 votes -
This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline ☀
31 votes -
Big Tech critic Tim Wu joins Joe Biden administration to work on US competition policy
9 votes -
Multimodal neurons in artificial neural networks
6 votes -
Data Transfer Project
6 votes -
Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web browsing
29 votes -
The explosive rise of Zoom is creating big opportunities for startups, which are raising millions to build apps and integrations
5 votes -
Google-free /e/ OS is now selling preloaded phones in the US, starting at $380
14 votes -
Arizona advances bill forcing Apple and Google to allow Fortnite-style alternative payment options
7 votes -
Spoonbill—a change-tracker for Twitter bios—offers a glimpse into the unseen effort with which we express our identities online, and how the uncanny feeling of being watched informs our sense of self
8 votes -
Thoughts on running online communities from the creator of Improbable Island
15 votes -
Brave has acquired Cliqz and their Tailcat search engine, plans to offer a privacy-oriented search engine
9 votes -
Gab removes their public Git repository after it reveals their developers adding (and struggling to fix) basic security issues that led to a 70GB data leak
12 votes -
How would you improve advertising on Reddit?
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither." However, given that social...
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither."
However, given that social media at scale has yet to establish a sustainable business model that doesn't rely on advertising (people like free content, after all), it seems advertising has become a necessary evil (and has pervaded nearly all forms of media for the past century regardless).
With that in mind, I think coming up with creative solutions to deliver relevant advertising while preserving user privacy and avoiding destructive feedback loops (i.e. where the search for ad revenue compromises the user base and content generation) is an interesting thought exercise. This is one of social media's largest problems, imho, but it might be easier to analyze just Reddit as a platform due to its similarities (and notable differences) to Tildes.
A couple thoughts of my own:
- Whitelist "safe" subreddits - A massive problem for Reddit is identifying content that brands want to avoid association with (e.g. porn, violence, drugs). While new subreddits crop up every day, the large ones do not change so fast and could be classified as safe content spaces (e.g. /r/aww)
- User subreddit subscriptions - Rather than target ads based on the subreddit currently being viewed, why not use the subs people have voluntarily indicated they are interested in?
- Allow users to tag content - While people can report content to the mods today, there is no ability to tag content (like Tildes has) from a user level. Content that's inappropriate for advertising may not necessarily be a reportable offense. By allowing users to classify content, better models for determining "good" content vs. "bad" could be developed using ML.
- Use Mods to determine content appropriateness - User supplied data may introduce too much noise into any given dataset, and perhaps mods are a better subjective filter to rely on. Certain subreddits can have biased mods for sure, but without trying to overhaul content moderation entirely, could mod bans/flair be used to indicate suitable content for ads?
- Use computer vision to classify content - While this wouldn't work at scale, an up-and-coming post could have a nebulous title and difficult-to-decipher sarcastic comments. The post itself could be an image macro or annotated video that could be used to determine the subject matter much more effectively.
To be clear, the spirit of my initial prompt isn't "how can Reddit make more money?" per se, but how can it find a sustainable business model without destroying itself/impacting society at large. Facebook and Twitter seem to have optimized for "engagement" metrics which leads to prioritization of outrage porn and political divisiveness. Snapchat and Instagram seem to have succumb to being mostly an ad delivery engine with some overly-filtered content of "real life" influencers (read: marketers) strewn in between. None of these seem like a net-good for society.
What are all your thoughts? Perhaps Big Tech social media is irredeemable at this point, but I'm trying not to take such a defeatist attitude and instead explore any positive solutions.
9 votes -
What do I need to know switching phones from Blackberry 10 to Android?
Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago. I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10...
Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago.
I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10 soon. The BB10 OS (not to be confused with BBOS, which ran the Bolds, etc. of BB's heyday) was intuitive, useful, and wayyyyy better than most people who never used it would have expected, only being doomed by the app gap. I'd have considered buying another Blackberry this year if I hadn't been given this other phone. I have long been wary of Android due to both privacy concerns and UI/UX gripes. Having tooled around for a couple days already, I'm struck by how many simple things I apparently can't do out of the box, and the fact that there are so. many. ads. Even in the apps! I know I will root and de-Google the device as much as I can once I get a hang of the OS.
So, I'm mainly looking for app recommendations, but general advice is appreciated as well. My use case is very functional - email, scheduling, messaging, browsing, navigation, weather, and calls. Preference given to FOSS and/or ad-free apps, but I'll pay up if it's really worth it. So far I've uninstalled a bunch of bloatware, installed Firefox, found SwiftKey to be the only half-decent replacement for Blackberry's terrific keyboard software, and the best free no-ad weather app looks to be a Norwegian one called Yr.
9 votes -
New live streaming site glimesh.tv is launching their alpha in four days
10 votes -
The garden of forking memes
8 votes -
Medical chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT-3 told a fake patient to kill themselves
12 votes -
Is building a folding iPhone possible? Let's take a closer look at these flexible amoled screens I found on AliExpress
5 votes -
Building a dystopia to make people click on ads | Zeynep Tufekci
12 votes -
The internet’s most beloved fanfiction site is undergoing a reckoning
15 votes -
How to check which ports are in use on your Linux system
6 votes