12 ms·
While this field is always interesting to read about, I absolutely refuse to give any technical input on how to improve fingerprinting, even if it's to fight bo
by Etheryte 2y ago
While this field is always interesting to read about, I absolutely refuse to give any technical input on how to improve fingerprinting, even if it's to fight bots. If you work on tracking, my opinion of you as a person is well summarized by apenwarr [0]:
> Can I work for a bad company and still be a good person?
> No.
[0] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121
- AndrewThrowaway 2y agoWhat is "a bad company"? Google? Amazon? Facebook? Tesla? Tinder? Boeing? Rheinmetall? Lockheed Martin? Pfizer?
- a-french-anon 2y ago"Would the world be better without it (inb4 it'll be replaced in all but name)?" Google? Amazon? Facebook? Tinder? Yes. Boeing? Lockheed Martin? No. Tesla? Pfizer? Unknown. You're welcome.
- internetter 2y agoUnder what criterion were your answers decided? To play the devil's advocate: Google has vastly improved access to information. Facebook has allowed hundreds of millions of people to remain in each other's lives even while separated by oceans. Amazon made it much easier to acquire very specific items. Tinder has helped people find love.
- vlovich123 2y agoAlmost feels like a viewpoint that changes depending on how old you are & what your life experiences have been. I’m glad OP is so certain in his judgement though, especially ranking war machine companies as good for the world.
- a-french-anon 2y agoPeople would go to war even with sticks and rocks, but the technological advances made by those companies probably trickled down to general aviation and produced generally interesting "things".
- vlovich123 2y agoThe amount of damage you can do and how quickly you can do it with sticks and rocks is a lot more contained and your ability to force project gets exponentially more expensive exponentially more quickly. Well researchers employed by Google are where transformers were presented which is how all modern AI companies build their models. I'd categorize generative AI as generally interesting things. Or a massively useful search platform, they solved email (until they stopped really paying attention to it). They also promulgated Android which has a lot of fans. And that's just the very visible stuff you'll see as someone not in the field. They've also contributed to storage & distributed systems research in very tangible ways. Or the research they've been doing into protein folding with AI via AlphaFold. Amazon pioneered modern cloud computing in such a way that they were the only game in town for a long time before Google and Microsoft attempted to compete. But sure, it sounds like your bias is against any company that's a "virtual" company and for companies that produce "real" things. However, you may want to ask yourself whether those companies would be able to build those "real" things as efficiently without all the virtual technology supporting them & letting them offload that complexity.
- a-french-anon 2y agoNo, you're jumping to conclusions. if I put Google or Amazon in the "bad" bin, it's because I don't think all those technological advances (everything considered) make the world a better or more interesting place. I mean: AI? Cloud? Is this really the future you wanted? In my eyes, advances in FEM simulation is what you can really argue for when talking about "support for builders of meatspace things".
- vlovich123 2y ago
- immibis 2y agoWhy is making planes that drop bombs on brown people not bad?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- batch12 2y agoThe quote is throwaway nonsense. No argument is made. I counter it with my own- Yes. By what standard are bad companies or good people measured? Do you define that? Religion? The current popular opinion?
- Etheryte 2y agoBy your own moral compass of course. There is no such thing as objective good or objective bad, it's all in the eye of the beholder. Surely you would've covered this in literature class in your youth? Likewise, me thinking someone is a bad person doesn't mean it's some objective and universal truth. It's literally, like, my opinion, man.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jgalt212 2y agoDon't be so cynical. There are universal truths.
- Trasmatta 2y agoSuch as?
- jgalt212 2y agoMuggers are bad people.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoMuggers disagree.
- jgalt212 2y agoYou must be a fan of the Barber Paradox.
- hugodellinger 2y agoTo be honest, they are focusing here on detecting tweaks used by scrappers to bypass bot protection, not on building an unique and stable fingerprint of a browser.
- genewitch 2y agoI scrape sites from time to time to back them up. I am kind of annoyed that this is going to get more difficult as time goes on thanks to societal leeches that have more rights than everyone (read "at least facebook, but probably X, and any other AI company not attached to a bookstore or book archival project") pirating content in 1998-2003. I know i have "no right" to archive content, but it comes in handy.
- immibis 2y agoBad people win, as evidenced by almost everything. If you want to be good later you probably have to be bad now. Good on you if you don't, though.