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Papers, Please!
Introduction
Today, many corporations and governments are opting for an ID verification before a user can access a service. What gives?
What’s Happening
After the UK introducing age verification by ID to the masses under the Online Safety Act. It’s supposed to “protect children, as well as adults, from illegal and harmful content, mis- and disinformation, etc.”. Big goals, for what is a simple ID scan.
As for how the identity verifications are handled: There are no regulations! There’s no one standardized system, and users may not even know if, or for how long, their personal data is stored. They may not know where it’s stored, either. The complete lack of transparency is apparent.
By birbsophone
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Why Should I Maintain Privacy In The Internet?
“Why should I care?” is a question often asked when the concept of privacy is discussed. There are plenty of reasons to preserve your privacy. Before elaborating on this, some terms must be defined:
Privacy, anonymity, and security are seperate concepts from each other.
This post is about privacy. Not anonymity, nor security.
Privacy: When personal data is kept from prying eyes. Personal data as a term includes what you search up on the internet, or a video that you watched. Metadata sent to websites you visit. Its literal definition is keeping something (like a conversation only between you and somebody else) personal.
By birbsophone
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Achieving Privacy on the Internet
Before I begin, I will say that for most people this is more a case of damage control than absolute true privacy. Aside from that, I will also not cover threat modeling in this post as there are two blogposts [1] [2] which explain what it is in detail. Please do read it if you do not know what “threat modeling” means. As a TL;DR, threat modeling is defining what you want privacy against.
By birbsophone
Click to read the rest of this postSystems Built on Trust
Introduction
Recently, another exploit was discovered on the Turkish government’s web-based platform “E-devlet”. On this platform is stored a high amount of personal data that belong to citizens living in Turkey, such as:
Their student certificate/student transcript
Criminal record
Name, surname, government ID, mother’s and father’s name
etc.
Unfortunately, this important data is not handled with care at all, and there’s been leaks in the past. In Turkey, as soon as you’re born, you’re already out in the open.
By birbsophone
Click to read the rest of this postSubmission and Mass Production
Introduction
According to a speech Aldous Huxley made in 1962, on the contrary to the novel 1984, in which control is forced upon society; an authority figure must receive at least some form of consent, to achieve control.
He tells that with pure force and terror, authority can’t last forever, that it’ll eventually be faced with some form of backlash. And that society must eventually be convinced and guided.
Upon these thoughts Huxley had written Brave New World.
By birbsophone
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2010: Odyssey Two
This post covers Arthur C. Clarke’s second novel on the Space Odyssey Series. For my post on the first book, click here.
Introduction
Although this continuation covers some of the criticisms I’ve commented on the first novel up, it also has many plot holes and irregularities. Although managing to grab my emotions at one point, it has unfortunately not gone much further from that.
The Story
The novel starts between Dr. Dimitri Moisevitch and Heywood Floyd from the previous novel, after Bowman’s disappearance near the mysterious monolith (previously in Iapetus, author decides to switch its location to Io which is a moon of Jupiter), where they talk about the second mission to investigate the massive monolith and its surroundings.
By birbsophone
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2001: A Space Odyssey Review
The Story
The novel begins in an ancient timeline, where humans are still cavemen. It covers a brief period of how man started to evolve, after an unknown extraterrestrial and intelligent lifeform drops a monolith that seemed to have effects on man.
It focuses on the tribe’s leader figure. This figure is forgotten, once the book skips the timeline to the future where man has evolved. The modern man quite fits the 1990’s vision of how humans’ advancements would be in the future.
By birbsophone
Click to read the rest of this postWorldbuilding, and Why It is the Most Important Aspect in a Story
What leaves an effect on me, is always, not the highlights of the story or the ending; but how it feels to live and be encapsulated in the book that was written.
I like post-apocalyptic genres, so a somber, sultry atmosphere— and how the environment cradles one in. That’s how I remember a sci-fi novel.
But it’s not only dark grimey worlds that I like. For example, Dune, by far my favorite series, the vast universe it offers, and what the Sandworm symbolizes. The books genuinely live. They have heartbeats.
By birbsophone
Click to read the rest of this postHow do I Install and Update Ungoogled Chromium on Windows?
Now that you’ve finally made the decision to switch; here’s the how-to:
- Install ungoogled-update.bat
1,5. Your browser may block this install (because it’s a file that executes a command), so select “Keep” on Chrome or other browsers based on chromium (vivaldi, opera, brave, etc…)
- Run it (double click)
- Click “y” if prompted
And you’re done. Windows will handle the rest.
What’s written in this command, if you want to know: “winget install –id=eloston.ungoogled-chromium -e”
By birbsophone
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