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https://www.wolfram.com/legal/privacy/wolfram/ https://www.wolfram.com/legal/privacy/wolfram/ > We may collect both Personal Information (PI) and non-Personal

by lapcat 3y ago

https://www.wolfram.com/legal/privacy/wolfram/ https://www.wolfram.com/legal/privacy/wolfram/ > We may collect both Personal Information (PI) and non-Personal Information (non-PI) about you through your experience on our websites, from your use of our services and products and via other voluntary contact with you (collectively "Services"). > The PI we collect through our Services primarily consists of information you submit to us. Because participation in our Services is voluntary, you have a choice of whether or not to disclose such information. The following are categories of PI we have collected in the past 12 months: > Identifiers > Examples include: a real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, Social Security number, driver's license number, passport number or other similar identifiers Now add birth date to the list.

travoc 3y ago
No, they're just storing pieces of pi.
- sph 3y ago
  There was somewhere a joke program that "compressed" data by saving its offset in the digits of pi.
  - sorokod 3y ago
    Or staying in Q, encode your program as an integer N, take 1/N and mark that fraction on a stick of unit length. Use the stick as long term storage for your code.
  - latexr 3y ago
    https://github.com/philipl/pifs https://github.com/philipl/pifs
  - jerf 3y ago
    It's not always a joke. There's dozens if not hundreds of people who believe they're cracked the compression problem by "just finding the offset of your data into pi". It is a recurring problem online: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compress+pi+offset https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compress+pi+offset (DDG actually did better than Google here which is why I link that), and sometimes explaining to the proposer why this doesn't work is quite difficult. Sometimes you end up reduced to "Well, just implement it then if it's so easy and amazing." (Fortunately, pi compression is not particularly amenable to one of the other basic "tricks" of fake compression algorithms, which is failing to count filenames or other metadata as part of the compressed data set, if you use them in the decompression algorithm. Pi "compression" is, in practice, a much better data expansion algorithm than a decompression algorithm. So you don't generally have to deal with having to explain how they've still failed even though their file sizes seem smaller.)
    - giancarlostoro 3y ago
      So are they the flat earthers of the IT world then?
      - jval43 3y ago
        More akin to the perpetual motion people.
    - FartyMcFarter 3y ago
      > Sometimes you end up reduced to "Well, just implement it then if it's so easy and amazing." This should be the standard answer, along with some probing questions like: - "So if you can always compress data, what happens when you compress the compressed data over and over? Surely you see this can't always work or everything could be compressed down to 1 bit?" - "Do you realize that there are 2^N strings with N bits, but fewer strings with less than N bits? Surely you don't think you can always represent N bits in fewer than N bits?" (i.e. something along the lines of the pigeonhole principle) If that doesn't convince them or they're unwilling to think through those fundamental questions or the implementation, it's a hopeless case that is best left alone.
      - jerf 3y ago
        I actually tried to link to the comp.compression FAQ but was disappointed that it didn't directly address pi compression, despite its popularity. It does address the pigeonhole principle though. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/
phoronixrly 3y ago
I was also thinking that this is a great way to harvest some birthday date info to combine with other data from tracking
- dxyms 3y ago
  Can't you harvest birthday info by just selecting all the dates?
  - bobobob420 3y ago
    Session id , tag user with cookie with birthday, sell to advertisters on id
    - onemoresoop 3y ago
      I wouldn't have an issue with sharing information with advertisers if it were solely for promotional purposes. However, the concerning part is that all data is up for grabs to anyone willing to pay for it, including scammers and the like. It's somewhat absurd that we have to protect something as simple as our birthdays, which should ideally be just harmless numbers with no potential for misuse. Unfortunately, the actual situation is far from reassuring, the surveillance nature of the internet is slowly taking shape. Sometimes I wonder if the digital identity problem could ever be solved and whether that will usher us under complete surveillance.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by lapcat 3y ago

travoc 3y ago

No, they're just storing pieces of pi.

sph 3y ago
There was somewhere a joke program that "compressed" data by saving its offset in the digits of pi.
- sorokod 3y ago
  Or staying in Q, encode your program as an integer N, take 1/N and mark that fraction on a stick of unit length. Use the stick as long term storage for your code.
- latexr 3y ago
  https://github.com/philipl/pifs https://github.com/philipl/pifs
- jerf 3y ago
  It's not always a joke. There's dozens if not hundreds of people who believe they're cracked the compression problem by "just finding the offset of your data into pi". It is a recurring problem online: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compress+pi+offset https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compress+pi+offset (DDG actually did better than Google here which is why I link that), and sometimes explaining to the proposer why this doesn't work is quite difficult. Sometimes you end up reduced to "Well, just implement it then if it's so easy and amazing." (Fortunately, pi compression is not particularly amenable to one of the other basic "tricks" of fake compression algorithms, which is failing to count filenames or other metadata as part of the compressed data set, if you use them in the decompression algorithm. Pi "compression" is, in practice, a much better data expansion algorithm than a decompression algorithm. So you don't generally have to deal with having to explain how they've still failed even though their file sizes seem smaller.)
  - giancarlostoro 3y ago
    So are they the flat earthers of the IT world then?
    - jval43 3y ago
      More akin to the perpetual motion people.
  - FartyMcFarter 3y ago
    > Sometimes you end up reduced to "Well, just implement it then if it's so easy and amazing." This should be the standard answer, along with some probing questions like: - "So if you can always compress data, what happens when you compress the compressed data over and over? Surely you see this can't always work or everything could be compressed down to 1 bit?" - "Do you realize that there are 2^N strings with N bits, but fewer strings with less than N bits? Surely you don't think you can always represent N bits in fewer than N bits?" (i.e. something along the lines of the pigeonhole principle) If that doesn't convince them or they're unwilling to think through those fundamental questions or the implementation, it's a hopeless case that is best left alone.
    - jerf 3y ago
      I actually tried to link to the comp.compression FAQ but was disappointed that it didn't directly address pi compression, despite its popularity. It does address the pigeonhole principle though. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/

phoronixrly 3y ago

I was also thinking that this is a great way to harvest some birthday date info to combine with other data from tracking

dxyms 3y ago
Can't you harvest birthday info by just selecting all the dates?
- bobobob420 3y ago
  Session id , tag user with cookie with birthday, sell to advertisters on id
  - onemoresoop 3y ago
    I wouldn't have an issue with sharing information with advertisers if it were solely for promotional purposes. However, the concerning part is that all data is up for grabs to anyone willing to pay for it, including scammers and the like. It's somewhat absurd that we have to protect something as simple as our birthdays, which should ideally be just harmless numbers with no potential for misuse. Unfortunately, the actual situation is far from reassuring, the surveillance nature of the internet is slowly taking shape. Sometimes I wonder if the digital identity problem could ever be solved and whether that will usher us under complete surveillance.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]