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I don't make ad tech. I work on privacy tech that forces advertisers into compliance with privacy laws at my current employer. That's a pinned tweet from May 2

by Sephr 6y ago

I don't make ad tech. I work on privacy tech that forces advertisers into compliance with privacy laws at my current employer. That's a pinned tweet from May 2020, and I still stand behind it. Here's something that will definitely blow your mind: I've unironically experimented with making an ad blocker blocker (i.e. forces ads to re-display after being removed) before, just to see if it could be done. This helped me understand what is currently possible. It was quite an interesting and educational experience which helped me improve an actual ad blocker in practice. A good defense requires a good understanding of offense. If you don't like the capabilities present in a browser, appeal to the browser vendor's developers in their public mailing lists.

seniorgarcia 6y ago
>Here's something that will definitely blow your mind: I've made an ad blocker blocker... It's not really blowing my mind that you are an disingenuous douchebag... Good luck with your capabilities, sounds like you are a great engineer. >I don't make ad tech. I work on privacy tech that forces advertisers in line at my current employer. How is client core count contributing to this in any way? >The answer to why: It helps with efficient allocation of worker thread pools. How? The amount of worker thread pools has no association to the amount of CPU cores.
- Sephr 6y ago
  > How is client core count contributing to this in any way? I maintain an open source encryption/decryption library[1] for E2EE privacy request fulfillment at my current employer. We use navigator.hardwareConcurrency to distribute decryption jobs across multiple CPU cores so that you can get your E2EE files downloaded in a timely manner. > It's not really blowing my mind that you are an disingenuous douchebag If it can be done, it will be done. Real progress lies in the social norms that we perpetuate through the standards and policies of the applications that we use. Try to be the force that makes changes for a world that you want to live in. 1. https://github.com/transcend-io/penumbra/ https://github.com/transcend-io/penumbra/
  - seniorgarcia 6y ago
    > My i7-8700k has 12 threads, my Surface book 2 pretends to have 16 threads, my iPad Pro pretends to have 16 cores, my iPhone pretends to have 12 cores. Why do you think you need my core count when that number is useless for any sort of performance indication? > If it can be done, it will be done. Real progress lies in the social norms that we perpetuate through the standards and policies of the applications that we use. Try to be the force that makes changes that you want. Sorry, but what is that even supposed to mean? "I do not know why we need to count client cores but we do it and there is some deeper truth to it"? I only use software that does not make useless claim like "Try to be the force that makes changes that you want", that is where real progress comes from. >Federated Learning of Cohorts is harmful to your privacy. This is literally additional tracking. Nobody is asking for this except for advertisers. Ad networks should target their ads based on the content being viewed, not on the person or 'cohort' viewing the content. Maybe you should review your tweets for what you believe to be true.
    - Sephr 6y ago
      > Why do you think you need my core count when that number is useless for any sort of performance indication? You're clearly being disingenuous, but I will answer your question in more detail. I already answered it above, but you don't seem to have the time to review the linked open source project. If I use every core on your device for a decryption job that uses 100% of the resources that you provide it, your decryption job will undoubtedly finish sooner if you provide more resources. It doesn't matter how fast or slow your cores are, or if your computer runs on a big.LITTLE architecture or not.
      - seniorgarcia 6y ago
        So, why do you need to know how many cores my platform will provide if you can not judge the performance of the cores anyway?
        Sephr 6y ago
        I answered that question in the comment that you are replying to.
- dang 6y ago
  Whoa, crossing into personal attack like this will get you banned here. Please don't post in the flamewar style generally. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

by Sephr 6y ago

seniorgarcia 6y ago

>Here's something that will definitely blow your mind: I've made an ad blocker blocker... It's not really blowing my mind that you are an disingenuous douchebag... Good luck with your capabilities, sounds like you are a great engineer. >I don't make ad tech. I work on privacy tech that forces advertisers in line at my current employer. How is client core count contributing to this in any way? >The answer to why: It helps with efficient allocation of worker thread pools. How? The amount of worker thread pools has no association to the amount of CPU cores.

Sephr 6y ago
> How is client core count contributing to this in any way? I maintain an open source encryption/decryption library[1] for E2EE privacy request fulfillment at my current employer. We use navigator.hardwareConcurrency to distribute decryption jobs across multiple CPU cores so that you can get your E2EE files downloaded in a timely manner. > It's not really blowing my mind that you are an disingenuous douchebag If it can be done, it will be done. Real progress lies in the social norms that we perpetuate through the standards and policies of the applications that we use. Try to be the force that makes changes for a world that you want to live in. 1. https://github.com/transcend-io/penumbra/ https://github.com/transcend-io/penumbra/
- seniorgarcia 6y ago
  > My i7-8700k has 12 threads, my Surface book 2 pretends to have 16 threads, my iPad Pro pretends to have 16 cores, my iPhone pretends to have 12 cores. Why do you think you need my core count when that number is useless for any sort of performance indication? > If it can be done, it will be done. Real progress lies in the social norms that we perpetuate through the standards and policies of the applications that we use. Try to be the force that makes changes that you want. Sorry, but what is that even supposed to mean? "I do not know why we need to count client cores but we do it and there is some deeper truth to it"? I only use software that does not make useless claim like "Try to be the force that makes changes that you want", that is where real progress comes from. >Federated Learning of Cohorts is harmful to your privacy. This is literally additional tracking. Nobody is asking for this except for advertisers. Ad networks should target their ads based on the content being viewed, not on the person or 'cohort' viewing the content. Maybe you should review your tweets for what you believe to be true.
  - Sephr 6y ago
    > Why do you think you need my core count when that number is useless for any sort of performance indication? You're clearly being disingenuous, but I will answer your question in more detail. I already answered it above, but you don't seem to have the time to review the linked open source project. If I use every core on your device for a decryption job that uses 100% of the resources that you provide it, your decryption job will undoubtedly finish sooner if you provide more resources. It doesn't matter how fast or slow your cores are, or if your computer runs on a big.LITTLE architecture or not.
    - seniorgarcia 6y ago
      So, why do you need to know how many cores my platform will provide if you can not judge the performance of the cores anyway?
      - Sephr 6y ago
        I answered that question in the comment that you are replying to.
dang 6y ago
Whoa, crossing into personal attack like this will get you banned here. Please don't post in the flamewar style generally. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.