Here's the initial email I received on September 19th:

Subject: Notice of AI Processing, How to Opt Out of AI Processing, and Updates to Our Terms and Privacy Policy

We are writing to let you know that as of September 18th, 2024, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to include the use of Artificial Intelligence ("AI") technology from OpenAI to produce Optery's Removals Reports. The AI will improve the speed and accuracy of our Removals Reports.

We will begin rolling out AI Removals Reports in the coming weeks, starting with our Extended plan customers. After AI Removals Reports have been rolled out for all Extended plan customers, then we will begin rolling them out to our Ultimate plan customers. Core and Free Basic plan users are not eligible at this time.

If you would like to learn more about how Optery will be utilizing AI for generating Removals Reports or how to opt out of your information from being sent to Open AI for Removals Report processing, please read this article on our Help Desk.

Below is a summary:

• When Removals Reports are processed with the help of AI, only the screenshots and data necessary to process the screenshots are sent to OpenAI.

• After the Removals Report is created, all screenshots and accompanying data are immediately deleted from OpenAI.

• Optery does not send screenshots or data for any other customers when processing a Removals Report, and does not provide any screenshots or any data to OpenAI for training AI models.

• If you do not want your information sent to OpenAI, you can opt out of Removals Reports at any time using the Report Preferences toggle on your Account page.

By continuing to use our products and services, you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

This is a required communication sent to all Optery account holders, which is why you are receiving this message even if you have previously opted out of marketing and promotional emails.

Here's the follow-up email I received today:

AI Processing Policy Update

We’ve been carefully considering feedback following Thursday's update regarding the use of AI processing technology for creating Removals Reports.

We remain committed to extending our product leadership through industry-leading innovation, but in retrospect we should have released the new AI Processing feature as "opt in" rather than "opt out". In our eagerness to provide the benefits of this new feature, we overlooked the fact that many of our customers have significant concerns with AI, and with companies such as OpenAI. We sincerely apologize for this mistake.

In the early hours this morning we reverted all accounts back to “Internal Processing” for Removals Reports, and going forward all customers must manually opt in to “AI Processing” from their Account page. We believe this approach strikes the right balance between those customers who prefer AI Processing with those who do not.

Our Help Desk articles on AI Processing and Internal Processing have been updated with this new policy.

Below is a summary:

• If you would like to opt in to AI Processing for your Removals Reports, please navigate to the Removals Reports Preferences section of your Account page.

• If you would like to opt out of AI Processing for your Removals Reports, no action is required as all users were reverted back to Internal Processing this morning.

• AI Processing is for the Processing of Removals Reports for Extended and Ultimate plan customers only. Core and Free Basic customers are not eligible at this time.

• AI Processing provides greater accuracy, and has the added benefit of providing highly intelligent feedback for identifying exposed profiles, thereby also increasing removals effectiveness, which is Optery's ultimate purpose.

• Optery does not provide any screenshots or any data for training AI models, and after a Removals Report is created with AI Processing, all screenshots and accompanying data are immediately deleted from OpenAI.

• Internal Processing provides a closed environment inside Optery's proprietary systems for processing Removals Reports and does not utilize third-party systems such as OpenAI. The tradeoff is reduced accuracy and removals effectiveness as compared to AI Processing.

Our customers are at the center of everything we do at Optery. We value the trust you place in us when signing up for our services, and we take that responsibility and your expectations very seriously.

This is a required policy update sent to all Optery account holders, which is why you are receiving this message even if you have previously opted out of marketing and promotional emails.

Hi Tilderinos,

I head up a small startup and we're looking to get some support for our data security. Up until now we've worked with small mom and pops that didn't have any requirements, but a few of our new clients have full data security teams and our infrastructure and policies/protocols aren't up to snuff. We reached out to a few consulting firms and they quotes us between $80-100k to get things set up and run us through a full SOC2 review. As a small company we don't really have that type of budget, more like $40-50k. I stumbled upon Vanta and Drata as alternatives and had meetings with their sales folks last week. Both of their offerings from setting up our protocols to monitoring and getting us through a SOC2 were only $16k.

Are platform based companies like Vanta or Drata enough to get us off the ground while we're still getting set up? Has anyone worked with them before and have any feelings one way or the other? Should we be signing on with a security consulting company - be it at a lower rate if we can negotiate it?
This is all quite new to me and any insight folks here can provide would be incredible useful.

I found myself on the Archivebox website earlier today. After reading some of it, that's the kind of program I could use. The ephemerous nature of the web is bothersome, so much content is lost for one reason or another. Archivebox seems to be one of the most popular tools, and it can automatically mirror my locally downloaded website to archive.org, which is great. It seems complex though, maybe more complex than I usually tolerate these days. Which is why I am asking if anyone has personal experience with Archivebox or other similar programs. Do you find them useful and reliable? Have you ever found in your local storage a webpage that you really liked, which was gone from the web? How's your setup?

Thank ;)

A year or two ago when the decay of social media became a popular topic of discussion, there was a lot of talk about a resurgence in the use of RSS readers. My impression recently was that the RSS renaissance hadn't really materialised in the end, but I realised that if it had it would be pretty hard to tell.

So, Tildes users: do you use an RSS reader currently? If so, is that a recent decision? Tell me about your experience.

Cohost.org, an independent social media blogging platform, will be shutting down as early as next month. A lot of users are talking about how their time on Cohost changed the way they think about what an experience in an online community can be like in the modern age of the internet. People saying that they'd rather move forward with spending more time offline and with their hobbies than chasing the next social media site after Cohost's closure. I tend to agree.

After checking an old forum recently that I used to frequent in the heyday of internet forums, I found it filled with racist fear-mongering that is left unmoderated after the driving force of the community passed away half a decade ago. I wonder how much of the spirit of the old web we can realistically rekindle. If you're on Tildes, you probably know everything about the faults of giant social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit. Heck, the poor quality the YouTube comments section was a meme when YouTube was new. It was never good on those sites. Just tolerable and everybody was there so you kind of had no choice. Now, many of those platforms are self-imploding.

Cohost, like Tildes, created an atmosphere where you didn't feel like you were committing a moral wrongdoing by not immediately spewing scalding hot takes about current events, drama and conflicts. You were encouraged to write text that wasn't throwaway garbage. You could have meaningful conversations about issues and find an audience. Cohost was not without its flaws. People of colour in particular recently shared experiences of racist harassment on the site that was purely handled by moderation. But overall the takes I'm reading now is that most people will be able to look back on their time on Cohost fondly. I've seen people calling it "the Dreamcast of websites".

Cohost was a social media site that was a joy to visit for me and didn't put me on an edge by interacting with it. I could write posts, long-form posts without pressure to hit out another one-line zinger while a topic "is still relevant". I didn't see endless chains of subtweets that deliberately avoided explicitly mentioning the drama they were commenting on, lest the hate mob find their comment. I didn't get into that kind of unnerving cycle of "I don't know what this post is about, but the infrastructure of this social network suggests it's a moral failure to not chime in on the topic de jour, so I better get going and scan vile tweets for an hour to find out what's going on".

And before you say that this is only a Twitter problem, I have had pretty much exactly the same experiences on Mastodon and especially Bluesky. I feel the same in over-crowded Discord servers where it's very difficult to keep track of what's been talked about and what the current topic of discussion is. I feel the same on the few active forums that still exist, like resetera, where there's just posts upon posts that you're kind of expected to read before you chime in into a thread.

So where to go from here? I'm thinking about setting up my own proper blog, maybe hosted on an own website. That way I can continue to create long form posts about topics I want to. And bring back a little more of the spirit of the old internet. Cohost is dead, but there's no going back to me to doomscrolling. Today I set my phone to aggressively limit my daily usage of Reddit & Mastodon. I said the following when Twitter crashed and burned, but this time I'm not desperate, but genuine when I say: It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

I have been having a lot of trouble finding a digital clock. I don't even know where to ask for recs, I tried a couple subreddits but there is no /r/digitalclocks so I'm trying a more general place here and maybe someone can help?

My requirements (I'm in the USA so that's where the time finding needs to happen):

1. It autosets the time based on the radio signal
2. It automatically detects DST
3. Backup battery so if I get a power failure it doesn't lose the time
4. The time is the only thing on the display. (Although, this seems to be the hardest one to find, so, if it also shows the temperature or something, that's ok, as long as the time is a lot bigger than anything else)
5. Not willing to spend more than $50 on a clock
6. Needs to be LED not LCD, i.e. I want to be able to see the time in a dark room without pressing a light-up button or anything

Additional bonuses:

1. If it has a rainbow display
2. If it has a USB charging port
3. Big numbers, like at least 1.5" tall

I don't care about the alarm or any overhead projection features.

If you have a digital clock that you love that meets these requirements (or at least mostly does) I would like to hear about it!! Thanks!!