17 ms·

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I suspect it makes me a vassal instead of a serf. Google consumes. Google contemplates. Google cognates. Google knows. Google sees me while I will never get to see it. At face value, as long as Google is Google, everything is okay but what happens when google is Google no more? When it goes to join the great corporate farm in the sky? What happens to the exabytes of data they’ll have gathered by then? Who will own it once Google is Google no more? What will happen to our lives once the data changes hands a decade or four from now? Are there any contingency plans for the largest dataset on Earth? Do we get to know these plans? Who the fuck owns MySpace now? Say what you will about Apple (and I’ve said a lot), at least I know where we stand. I have switched to iOS and I recommend that you should do the same. At the very least, Google will no longer know when you sleep.

fdchn2019 8y ago
I love Google. I bought an Oppo phone. But all my data goes through their app - even when i switch off their SMS feature that data still goes through their app and i guess they intercept it and send it to a dial home server. And I'd rather my data goes to Google. So when I can afford a Google Pixel - gonna buy one But anyone who thinks he's wrong - Remember into whose hands Java fell.
- oblio 8y ago
  Sun was a colossal screw up, though. IBM is still around, making billions. As is Microsoft. Google will probably bury me.
gcbw2 8y ago
> what happens when google is Google no more? Google already have many, many advertising partners to whom they gladly provide your location and other data. But they anonymize it, so you are safe ;)
- the_duke 8y ago
  > But they anonymize it, so you are safe For now...
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Generally, Google sells ads against your data, they don't sell the data itself.
- icebraining 8y ago
  How can I buy anonymized location data? Is there a landing page for that service?
- mda 8y ago
  This is a lie.
hammock 8y ago
Your point is well taken, but 100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019? >Who the fuck owns MySpace now? It's all deleted. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18271023/myspace-music-videos-deleted-2003-2015-server-migration https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18271023/myspace-music-vi...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019? Epidemiologists? Researchers? Academics? Governments trying to model future disease response based on historical trends? Just off the top of my head.
  - hu3 8y ago
    In this case I say let them have it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dao- 8y ago
  If it's, say, 10 instead of 100 years and something more serious than a flu, insurance companies or future employers for instance might care?
- areoform 8y ago
  > but 100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019 My future health care provider might. Maybe they’ll spike rates by figuring out how often I’m ill using this data. Maybe I will marry a congressman someday and the sext that I sent today to my BF will be used to blackmail us. Maybe 30 years from now, people will be able to use my youthful indiscretions as leverage. Maybe I won’t get certain jobs because of where I’ve been or whom I’ve accidentally been close to in the location data. Maybe my sleeping habits will lead to higher life insurance rates. Russia and private actors have already personally targeted millions of people using highly directed ads to move an election using publicly available data. Imagine what they could do with Google’s data. Target congressional aides? Target the POTUS’ mistress (or mister)? In the hands of a Caesar or a Napoleon that data is the power to reshape the Earth, smite your enemies, eviscerate any obstacles and remake the holder into an invincible demi-god.
holy_city 8y ago
The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their private financial information parsed and stored by Google services is absurd. It should never have crossed anyone's mind to even do that, let alone advertise it as a feature.
- themacguffinman 8y ago
  I'm a user. I appreciate it. It's puzzling that you think it's such a deeply unpopular feature. Third party bill reminders isn't a taboo or unexplored territory.
  - holy_city 8y ago
    I don't think it's a deeply unpopular feature, I think it's deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user. And it's not the reminder that bothers me. It's that I don't trust Google not to share the data they extract from my private communications. Financial information in particular can be used against you by a number of parties, and it's been used to discriminate against people in the past. When it comes to the collection of that data by scanning private communications, the ethical alarm bells should have been ringing, and the fact they collect that data should be disclosed and be opt-in (or opt-out). If it's a matter of "if you don't pay for the product you are the product" that's not true - I did pay a lot of money for their product (I own a Pixel device), and if they offered an email product that I could pay for with the solace that it wouldn't be reading my emails, I would.
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
      > deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user How was it presented to you in a way that you found deeply unethical? As I understand it shows up as a soft notification on your phone.
gjtorikian 8y ago
Curious. What do you think happens when Apple goes under?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Isn't that the whole argument? If Apple goes under, they can't sell off data they didn't collect?
aparc123 8y ago
Can't we make the same argument about Apple. What happens when apple stops being apple, when they don't have the smart phone dominance and decides to venture back into Ads. Or who owns apple when someone else has to. I understand why anyone would want ios now but your argument is about the future.
- oflannabhra 8y ago
  The point the parent is making is that Apple doesn’t have your data in the first place, therefore if things go south, or they become nefarious, you’ll have to give them your data first.
  - aparc123 8y ago
    Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data.
    - xvector 8y ago
      > Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data. Provide a source. Apple is pretty transparent in its iCloud security overview[1] and iOS Privacy Whitepaper[2]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 [2]: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....
      - vanche 7y ago
        I'd rather like to have the "source" of iOS/iCloud client and verify if they behave as they claim.
    - urda 8y ago
      [Citation needed] mate. Meanwhile take a moment and review Apple's stance on privacy and security before you continue [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/ [2] https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ [3] https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....
loudtieblahblah 8y ago
Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh. I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to find an iOS solution for. I loathe the notch. But my next phone will be an iPhone. Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways. And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  How about the Librem 5?
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    It still reports your movements to your cell provider. Get rid of cell phones if you're worried about privacy.
    - jammygit 8y ago
      That is like saying that 'unless its 100% perfect, I may as well send everything to Google and the ad-verse' People can't simply get rid of their cell phones. At minimum, I need one for work.
      - gowld 8y ago
        If you care about protecting something, leaving one known-exploited exploitable backdoor open is practically as bad as leaving 100 open. "Closing all known backdoors" is a rational compromise. "Closing more backdoors known others are open" is an irrational feelgood measure.
clairity 8y ago
> "I nominally pay for these services..." you give them all that valuable personal and private data and then also pay them? why are you so resigned to this? the tradeoff for knowing everything about you gives you what, a few less taps on your phone? people ignored or minimized it then, but their direction was abundantly clear by 2004 or so: search -> adwords -> adsense -> gmail ---> all-your-data-everywhere (gmail seemed cool at the time until the realization of where all this was going). how is it that so many people are just now waking up to the dangers of google (and facebook, incidentally)?
- pdimitar 8y ago
  If something is convenient for people and saves them time, they are willing to close their eyes about lost privacy. Until it directly bites them of course -- which won't happen to most of us. It's just how we tick. And a lot of marketing strategies are based on those specifics.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Is it really that hard to understand? What's the concrete harm so far? I've been using Google for a couple decades, and I can't really articulate a specific way that I've been harmed. Yes, I realize that there's the potential for harm from a leak or something like that, but it's hardly surprising that the abstract notion of possible harm isn't super compelling to the average user when they're currently getting useful services for "free".
  - clairity 8y ago
    you're rationalizing, i.e., looking the other way to avoid cognitive dissonance. but part of why we have such big brains is to anticipate the future, not simply accept events as they occur. what might the future you say? should we ignore that gas leak in the kitchen because it hasn't killed anyone yet? it's important to expose this kind of mis-rationalization, especially when tiny individual harms accumulate otherwise silently to become population-level dangers (e.g., measles).
    - 8y ago
mikorym 8y ago
Existential crises aside, I would really prefer to have a phone that I can program as directly and extensively as a raspberry pi.
oflannabhra 8y ago
Indeed, the contract we sign is not “do I trust Google,” it is “do I trust Google in perpetuity.” I can think of many, many outcomes wherein Google’s collected data is more valuable for uses other than “helpful”.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Well, as of right now, you can choose to delete your data, so it's not necessarily perpetual. Of course, absent something like GDPR, it's possible in the future Google could change their minds about that.
tensor 8y ago
I'm comfortable with what Google knows about me, and I'm very willing to give them all this information for the technology and convenience they provide. Apple's AI isn't competitive at this time.
scarface74 8y ago
I also prefer the value proposition of the Apple ecosystem - I give Apple money and they give me stuff -the point of the article is that Apple’s business model puts their products out of reach for most of the world.
2Ccltvcm 8y ago
Rupert Murdoch and criminals own MySpace data. From Wikipedia: 2013–present: Time Inc. and Meredith Corporation ownership On February 11, 2016, it was announced that MySpace and its parent company had been bought by Time Inc.[18] Time Inc. was in turn purchased by the Meredith Corporation on January 31, 2018.[20] In May 2016, the data for almost 360 million MySpace accounts was offered on the "Real Deal" dark market website. The leaked data included email addresses, usernames and weakly encrypted passwords (SHA1 hashes of the first 10 characters of the password converted to lowercase and stored without a cryptographic salt[68]).[69] The exact data breach date is unknown, but analysis of the data suggests it was exposed around eight years before being made public, around mid-2008 to early-2009.[70] On March 18, 2019, it was revealed that MySpace lost all of their user content from 2016 and earlier in "a server migration gone wrong". It was widely reported that over 50 million songs and 12 years worth of content was permanently lost, and there was no backup.[71] and there was no backup and there was no backup and there was no backup Wow.
- andbberger 8y ago
  I'd like to believe there were backups but the engineers running the show decided to have an accident and let all that data be at peace.
throwayEngineer 8y ago
You think Apple is less evil than Google? Remember that Apple has been cracked by the FBI, has proprietary connectors, and charges more than anyone. I couldn't disagree more. Apple is horrible to customers and developers.
- Dirlewanger 8y ago
  Remember that Apple didn't help the FBI in breaking it. Apple stood up to the FBI. The FBI later went to an Israeli firm to crack it.
- mediocrejoker 8y ago
  Apple got a ton of flak for adopting USB-C way before anyone else, which is the opposite of proprietary. I also don't see how "being cracked by the FBI" makes one evil, in fact I think resisting the FBI in the first place makes them good.
  - xvector 8y ago
    Why are people downvoting your comment here? You are 100% correct. Apple also made significant contributions to the development of USB-C and have the best implementation of USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 in their products bar none. Yes, the iPhone still ships with Lightning connectors. But Lightning was revolutionary in a world full of phenomenally shitty Micro-USB connectors. It's really not a big deal, and Apple will move to USB-C for sure eventually.
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      Right completely ignore what Google did for USB-C ? And what one google engineer Benson Leung did for USB-C cables ?
      - xvector 7y ago
        Why the need for such a petulant and childish response? Did I say that Google and Benson didn't contribute to USB-C? No. Neither did I phrase it as if Apple was the only contributor. So what's with the defensiveness?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
matchagaucho 8y ago
Speaking of MySpace, I noticed in yesterday's keynote that Google controlled the end-to-end (E2E) user experience for their demos to work flawlessly. The value proposition to Developers was not very clear, but I imagine a few bad 3rd party apps could severely harm the E2E Google experience.
PorterDuff 8y ago
"Google is already not Google." The minute their CEO went all-in on a US Presidential election well, that ol' Rubicon got crossed.
Nition 8y ago
This already happened to me. Around 14 years ago I created a MySpace musician page and apparently I put in my real birthday. It must have been public although I surely didn't intend it to be, and some sort of large data aggregator site picked it up. Later I deleted my MySpace page but the data aggregator still had my info. The data site had tools to remove your data, but before I knew my data was even there, Google bought the site sometime around 2011 and shut it down, and added the data to their own system. Today, if you search my full name on Google, it shows an infobox on the side with my real birthday. Google considers birthdays non-private enough that they won't let me remove it. I'm no celebrity but I get that info box because I had a MySpace musician page once over a decade ago. My birthday now appears nowhere on the internet except that Google search infobox. MySpace, the original aggregator, all gone - but the data lives on. We don't have a Right To Be Forgotten law where I live but if we ever get one, I know where I'll be going first.
teekert 7y ago
There is a contingency: GDPR. Use my data in ways I don't agree with and you are breaking the law. Best we can do in a world where information wants to and will be free, imo.
- DanBC 7y ago
  Consent is one legal basis for use of data under GDPR, but there are others.
  - teekert 7y ago
    Research use is one but you have to show that re-consenting is an unreasonable effort. Research use comes with a obligation to make sure data is anonymous and results have to be made public (for the common good).
mengmeng 7y ago
its not that people can't see truth due to intelligence. the ability to see truth has requires only average levels of g. rather, the ability is bestowed as a gift. the gift is in the form of trauma through which the actual state of things forcefully injects itself into one's consciousness uprooting the foundations of self and inserting itself. and until death, it stays.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

fdchn2019 8y ago

I love Google. I bought an Oppo phone. But all my data goes through their app - even when i switch off their SMS feature that data still goes through their app and i guess they intercept it and send it to a dial home server. And I'd rather my data goes to Google. So when I can afford a Google Pixel - gonna buy one But anyone who thinks he's wrong - Remember into whose hands Java fell.

oblio 8y ago
Sun was a colossal screw up, though. IBM is still around, making billions. As is Microsoft. Google will probably bury me.

gcbw2 8y ago

> what happens when google is Google no more? Google already have many, many advertising partners to whom they gladly provide your location and other data. But they anonymize it, so you are safe ;)

the_duke 8y ago
> But they anonymize it, so you are safe For now...
TulliusCicero 8y ago
Generally, Google sells ads against your data, they don't sell the data itself.
icebraining 8y ago
How can I buy anonymized location data? Is there a landing page for that service?
mda 8y ago
This is a lie.

hammock 8y ago

Your point is well taken, but 100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019? >Who the fuck owns MySpace now? It's all deleted. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18271023/myspace-music-videos-deleted-2003-2015-server-migration https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18271023/myspace-music-vi...

reaperducer 8y ago
100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019? Epidemiologists? Researchers? Academics? Governments trying to model future disease response based on historical trends? Just off the top of my head.
- hu3 8y ago
  In this case I say let them have it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dao- 8y ago
If it's, say, 10 instead of 100 years and something more serious than a flu, insurance companies or future employers for instance might care?
areoform 8y ago
> but 100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019 My future health care provider might. Maybe they’ll spike rates by figuring out how often I’m ill using this data. Maybe I will marry a congressman someday and the sext that I sent today to my BF will be used to blackmail us. Maybe 30 years from now, people will be able to use my youthful indiscretions as leverage. Maybe I won’t get certain jobs because of where I’ve been or whom I’ve accidentally been close to in the location data. Maybe my sleeping habits will lead to higher life insurance rates. Russia and private actors have already personally targeted millions of people using highly directed ads to move an election using publicly available data. Imagine what they could do with Google’s data. Target congressional aides? Target the POTUS’ mistress (or mister)? In the hands of a Caesar or a Napoleon that data is the power to reshape the Earth, smite your enemies, eviscerate any obstacles and remake the holder into an invincible demi-god.

holy_city 8y ago

The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their private financial information parsed and stored by Google services is absurd. It should never have crossed anyone's mind to even do that, let alone advertise it as a feature.

themacguffinman 8y ago
I'm a user. I appreciate it. It's puzzling that you think it's such a deeply unpopular feature. Third party bill reminders isn't a taboo or unexplored territory.
- holy_city 8y ago
  I don't think it's a deeply unpopular feature, I think it's deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user. And it's not the reminder that bothers me. It's that I don't trust Google not to share the data they extract from my private communications. Financial information in particular can be used against you by a number of parties, and it's been used to discriminate against people in the past. When it comes to the collection of that data by scanning private communications, the ethical alarm bells should have been ringing, and the fact they collect that data should be disclosed and be opt-in (or opt-out). If it's a matter of "if you don't pay for the product you are the product" that's not true - I did pay a lot of money for their product (I own a Pixel device), and if they offered an email product that I could pay for with the solace that it wouldn't be reading my emails, I would.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
    > deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user How was it presented to you in a way that you found deeply unethical? As I understand it shows up as a soft notification on your phone.

gjtorikian 8y ago

Curious. What do you think happens when Apple goes under?

saagarjha 8y ago
Isn't that the whole argument? If Apple goes under, they can't sell off data they didn't collect?

aparc123 8y ago

Can't we make the same argument about Apple. What happens when apple stops being apple, when they don't have the smart phone dominance and decides to venture back into Ads. Or who owns apple when someone else has to. I understand why anyone would want ios now but your argument is about the future.

oflannabhra 8y ago
The point the parent is making is that Apple doesn’t have your data in the first place, therefore if things go south, or they become nefarious, you’ll have to give them your data first.
- aparc123 8y ago
  Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data.
  - xvector 8y ago
    > Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data. Provide a source. Apple is pretty transparent in its iCloud security overview[1] and iOS Privacy Whitepaper[2]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 [2]: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....
    - vanche 7y ago
      I'd rather like to have the "source" of iOS/iCloud client and verify if they behave as they claim.
  - urda 8y ago
    [Citation needed] mate. Meanwhile take a moment and review Apple's stance on privacy and security before you continue [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/ [2] https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ [3] https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....

loudtieblahblah 8y ago

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh. I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to find an iOS solution for. I loathe the notch. But my next phone will be an iPhone. Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways. And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.

Apocryphon 8y ago
How about the Librem 5?
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  It still reports your movements to your cell provider. Get rid of cell phones if you're worried about privacy.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    That is like saying that 'unless its 100% perfect, I may as well send everything to Google and the ad-verse' People can't simply get rid of their cell phones. At minimum, I need one for work.
    - gowld 8y ago
      If you care about protecting something, leaving one known-exploited exploitable backdoor open is practically as bad as leaving 100 open. "Closing all known backdoors" is a rational compromise. "Closing more backdoors known others are open" is an irrational feelgood measure.

clairity 8y ago

> "I nominally pay for these services..." you give them all that valuable personal and private data and then also pay them? why are you so resigned to this? the tradeoff for knowing everything about you gives you what, a few less taps on your phone? people ignored or minimized it then, but their direction was abundantly clear by 2004 or so: search -> adwords -> adsense -> gmail ---> all-your-data-everywhere (gmail seemed cool at the time until the realization of where all this was going). how is it that so many people are just now waking up to the dangers of google (and facebook, incidentally)?

pdimitar 8y ago
If something is convenient for people and saves them time, they are willing to close their eyes about lost privacy. Until it directly bites them of course -- which won't happen to most of us. It's just how we tick. And a lot of marketing strategies are based on those specifics.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
Is it really that hard to understand? What's the concrete harm so far? I've been using Google for a couple decades, and I can't really articulate a specific way that I've been harmed. Yes, I realize that there's the potential for harm from a leak or something like that, but it's hardly surprising that the abstract notion of possible harm isn't super compelling to the average user when they're currently getting useful services for "free".
- clairity 8y ago
  you're rationalizing, i.e., looking the other way to avoid cognitive dissonance. but part of why we have such big brains is to anticipate the future, not simply accept events as they occur. what might the future you say? should we ignore that gas leak in the kitchen because it hasn't killed anyone yet? it's important to expose this kind of mis-rationalization, especially when tiny individual harms accumulate otherwise silently to become population-level dangers (e.g., measles).
  - 8y ago

mikorym 8y ago

Existential crises aside, I would really prefer to have a phone that I can program as directly and extensively as a raspberry pi.

oflannabhra 8y ago

Indeed, the contract we sign is not “do I trust Google,” it is “do I trust Google in perpetuity.” I can think of many, many outcomes wherein Google’s collected data is more valuable for uses other than “helpful”.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
Well, as of right now, you can choose to delete your data, so it's not necessarily perpetual. Of course, absent something like GDPR, it's possible in the future Google could change their minds about that.

tensor 8y ago

I'm comfortable with what Google knows about me, and I'm very willing to give them all this information for the technology and convenience they provide. Apple's AI isn't competitive at this time.

scarface74 8y ago

I also prefer the value proposition of the Apple ecosystem - I give Apple money and they give me stuff -the point of the article is that Apple’s business model puts their products out of reach for most of the world.

2Ccltvcm 8y ago

Rupert Murdoch and criminals own MySpace data. From Wikipedia: 2013–present: Time Inc. and Meredith Corporation ownership On February 11, 2016, it was announced that MySpace and its parent company had been bought by Time Inc.[18] Time Inc. was in turn purchased by the Meredith Corporation on January 31, 2018.[20] In May 2016, the data for almost 360 million MySpace accounts was offered on the "Real Deal" dark market website. The leaked data included email addresses, usernames and weakly encrypted passwords (SHA1 hashes of the first 10 characters of the password converted to lowercase and stored without a cryptographic salt[68]).[69] The exact data breach date is unknown, but analysis of the data suggests it was exposed around eight years before being made public, around mid-2008 to early-2009.[70] On March 18, 2019, it was revealed that MySpace lost all of their user content from 2016 and earlier in "a server migration gone wrong". It was widely reported that over 50 million songs and 12 years worth of content was permanently lost, and there was no backup.[71] and there was no backup and there was no backup and there was no backup Wow.

andbberger 8y ago
I'd like to believe there were backups but the engineers running the show decided to have an accident and let all that data be at peace.

throwayEngineer 8y ago

You think Apple is less evil than Google? Remember that Apple has been cracked by the FBI, has proprietary connectors, and charges more than anyone. I couldn't disagree more. Apple is horrible to customers and developers.

Dirlewanger 8y ago
Remember that Apple didn't help the FBI in breaking it. Apple stood up to the FBI. The FBI later went to an Israeli firm to crack it.
mediocrejoker 8y ago
Apple got a ton of flak for adopting USB-C way before anyone else, which is the opposite of proprietary. I also don't see how "being cracked by the FBI" makes one evil, in fact I think resisting the FBI in the first place makes them good.
- xvector 8y ago
  Why are people downvoting your comment here? You are 100% correct. Apple also made significant contributions to the development of USB-C and have the best implementation of USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 in their products bar none. Yes, the iPhone still ships with Lightning connectors. But Lightning was revolutionary in a world full of phenomenally shitty Micro-USB connectors. It's really not a big deal, and Apple will move to USB-C for sure eventually.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Right completely ignore what Google did for USB-C ? And what one google engineer Benson Leung did for USB-C cables ?
    - xvector 7y ago
      Why the need for such a petulant and childish response? Did I say that Google and Benson didn't contribute to USB-C? No. Neither did I phrase it as if Apple was the only contributor. So what's with the defensiveness?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

matchagaucho 8y ago

Speaking of MySpace, I noticed in yesterday's keynote that Google controlled the end-to-end (E2E) user experience for their demos to work flawlessly. The value proposition to Developers was not very clear, but I imagine a few bad 3rd party apps could severely harm the E2E Google experience.

PorterDuff 8y ago

"Google is already not Google." The minute their CEO went all-in on a US Presidential election well, that ol' Rubicon got crossed.

Nition 8y ago

This already happened to me. Around 14 years ago I created a MySpace musician page and apparently I put in my real birthday. It must have been public although I surely didn't intend it to be, and some sort of large data aggregator site picked it up. Later I deleted my MySpace page but the data aggregator still had my info. The data site had tools to remove your data, but before I knew my data was even there, Google bought the site sometime around 2011 and shut it down, and added the data to their own system. Today, if you search my full name on Google, it shows an infobox on the side with my real birthday. Google considers birthdays non-private enough that they won't let me remove it. I'm no celebrity but I get that info box because I had a MySpace musician page once over a decade ago. My birthday now appears nowhere on the internet except that Google search infobox. MySpace, the original aggregator, all gone - but the data lives on. We don't have a Right To Be Forgotten law where I live but if we ever get one, I know where I'll be going first.

teekert 7y ago

There is a contingency: GDPR. Use my data in ways I don't agree with and you are breaking the law. Best we can do in a world where information wants to and will be free, imo.

DanBC 7y ago
Consent is one legal basis for use of data under GDPR, but there are others.
- teekert 7y ago
  Research use is one but you have to show that re-consenting is an unreasonable effort. Research use comes with a obligation to make sure data is anonymous and results have to be made public (for the common good).

mengmeng 7y ago

its not that people can't see truth due to intelligence. the ability to see truth has requires only average levels of g. rather, the ability is bestowed as a gift. the gift is in the form of trauma through which the actual state of things forcefully injects itself into one's consciousness uprooting the foundations of self and inserting itself. and until death, it stays.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]