Mozilla today released Firefox 86 for Macs, Windows, and Linux machines, introducing a new feature called Total Cookie Protection.
Total Cookie Protection is designed to stop cookies from tracking users across the web by introducing a “separate cookie jar for every website.”
Total Cookie Protection is available as part of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection functionality, and can be enabled when the browser is set to ETP Strict Mode. Mozilla says that Firefox now offers “strong, comprehensive protection” to combat cookie tracking. The update also adds support for multiple picture-in-picture views, plus keyboard controls for fast forward and rewind.
Don’t be a total wanker. Read up about alternatives to the various platform’s default browsers.
For Windows that’s Internet Explorer (Exploiter, Exploader, Explosion?)
Maybe this is the network security architect coming out, but there has to be a good reason why Facebook has completely done an about face (180 degree turn for you non-military types) on its decision to ban news article postings on Facebook – https://gilchrist.cloud/?p=150
The company banned all news sharing last week in response to a proposed Media Bargaining Law, which aims to level the playing field between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms in terms of bargaining power.
The law would allow Australian news publications to negotiate for fair payment for their journalist’s work, effectively forcing companies like Facebook and Google to pay for news content.
However, Facebook said on Tuesday that it had been reassured by discussions over the weekend with the Australian government about negotiated amendments to the bargaining code, adding that it was “satisfied” with the agreement they had reached.
“After further discussions, we are satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognize the value our platform provides to publishers relative to the value we receive from them,” Facebook’s VP of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown, said in a statement.
“Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation. We have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers,” Brown said.
Australian authorities plan to introduce further amendments to the proposed law so that the government may not apply the code to Facebook if it can demonstrate a “significant contribution” to local journalism, and a two-month mediation period before enforced arbitration comes into effect, allowing parties additional time to reach a private deal.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had told him the ban would end “in the coming days”, following the talks. “Facebook has re-friended Australia,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Despite Facebook’s reversal, its original decision to ban news shared on its platform attracted negative headlines about the company around the world, and prompted other governments to consider moves to curtail its power. Canada has said that it is considering similar changes in its media law, while British politicians also called voiced concerns about Facebook’s actions in Australia.
However, Facebook did receive support from some quarters when it complained that Australia’s proposed law had been badly drafted. For instance, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web, said he was concerned that forcing companies to pay for certain content could make the internet “unworkable.”
“Specifically, I am concerned that that code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online,” Berners-Lee said.
My thoughts on this are that it could be just Facebook having a think about being enormous arse hats about this, OR there’s something that’s just not adding up, and the Australian Liberal party (these clowns that have been in power FAR too long and who seem to think that they can operate outside of the laws in Australia) has done something dodgy – AGAIN.
Yesterday, Facebook followed through on its threat to ban users from sharing news on its platform in Australia, in response to proposed media laws in the country that the company claims “fundamentally misunderstand” its relationship with publishers who share news content.
The move is a retaliation to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) proposed Media Bargaining law, which seeks to redress the balance in terms of the bargaining power between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms.
The law would allow Australian news publications to negotiate for fair payment for their journalist’s work, effectively forcing social media companies to pay for news content.
Facebook and Google have had three months to negotiate with Australian media organizations to find a solution, but those discussions have failed to reach an agreement. Facebook concluded that the law “seeks to penalize Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for,” while an inquiry last month saw Google go so far as to threaten to pull its search engine from the country entirely.
Facebook’ decision means Australian news publishers are no longer able to share stories on the platform, while Facebook users won’t be able to see or share international news to local Facebook users. At the same time, Facebook users overseas won’t be able to read or share Australian content.
Announcing the change in a press release, Facebook explained its reasoning behind the nationwide content block and its total opposition to the proposed change in law:
The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content. It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.
This discussion has focused on US technology companies and how they benefit from news content on their services. We understand many will ask why the platforms may respond differently. The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news. Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.
In fact, and as we have made clear to the Australian government for many months, the value exchange between Facebook and publishers runs in favor of the publishers — which is the reverse of what the legislation would require the arbitrator to assume. Last year Facebook generated approximately 5.1 billion free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimated AU$407 million.
For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal. News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed. Journalism is important to a democratic society, which is why we build dedicated, free tools to support news organisations around the world in innovating their content for online audiences.
Australia’s communications minister Paul Fletcher hit out at the decision, telling Australia’s ABC News this morning that Facebook needs to “think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing.”
“They’re effectively saying, on our platform, there will not be any information from organizations which employ paid journalists, which have fact checking processes, editorial policies,” said Fletcher. “They’re effectively saying any information that is available on our site does not come from these reliable sources.”
The fallout from the ban is already impacting a range of Facebook-hosted organizations in the country, with the ban curtailing access to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Queensland Health, and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA. Other pages for charities, politicians, sports groups, and other non-news organizations have also been affected.
However, the Australian government is standing by the law, which passed the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. It has broad cross-party support and will be debated again in parliament on Thursday, according to the BBC.
“We will legislate this code. We want the digital giants paying traditional news media businesses for generating original journalistic content,” said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who added that “the eyes of the world are watching what’s happening here”. He said he’d also had a discussion with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg which had been “constructive”.
So I don’t want to tell people what to do, but I’m sticking up a giant middle finger to facebook, and I’m seriously considering not using it again.
Well, it seems that that State Government’s 5 day lockdown has indeed done it’s job – slamming on the brakes on the spread of the severely contagious UK variant of the Corona virus.
Victorians on a whole can be proud that when everyone just fucking does what is asked of them!
Ladies and Gentlemen, please if you’re easily offended read no further because I’m about to let loose with a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush.
And here it comes.
What in the useless, tiny cocked, selfish, cock-wombled, shit, arsehole and or cock guzzling fucking useless bullshit is this about?
I wrote on here on the 1st of January 2021 – and here’s the article to prove it https://gilchrist.cloud/?p=122 – that surely common scense must prevail.
On Sunday, December 27th, I was walking Ollie (my golden Labrador) at Parkdale beach, which has subsequently been deemed a hotspot for corona virus.
Yesterday (December 31st), I was informed that I should get tested for corona virus.
After nearly 5 fucking hours in a car, I did indeed receive an oral swab, and a nasal swab (that fucking well felt as if it touched my brain).
This morning at 6:19am, I received a negative result for covid-19 – thankfully.
My rant is this. Why, oh why do I, who’ve dutifully performed the requirements of the first and second lockdowns which lasted 4 fucking months, have to put up with fucking micro cocked wankers who risk a fucking third lockdown by spreading an incredibly contagious virus like covid-19?
Yes, there is a vaccine for this now – HOWEVER, it will be many months before it’s widely available.
For those of you who don’t know what Siri is, Siri is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple’s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS operating systems.
Supposedly Siri won’t ever activiate unless my Siri enabled devices hear the magic phrase: “Hey Siri…”
So why do I say “fucking Siri” whenever Siri randomly chimes in – FUCKING UNEXPECTEDLY – when I’m watching TV, or on the phone, or just talking to friends and neighbors? Simple – I never said to my device: “Hey Siri…”
The class action lawsuit was first filed in August 2019 after it became known that Apple had employed contractors to listen to and grade some anonymized Siri conversations for product improvement purposes.
Those contractors told The Guardian that they overheard confidential medical details, drug deals, and other private information from accidental Siri activations, and some expressed concern that users were not adequately informed about the recordings.
All of the allegations in the lawsuit were based on information that was included in the original story from The Guardian highlighting Apple’s use of contractors to analyze Siri data, with the plaintiffs providing no proof that their own private data was accidentally collected by Apple and misused.
The Guardian article does not plausibly suggest that all Apple’s devices were subject to accidental triggers and review by third party contractors, much less that such interception always occurred in reasonably private settings. The article discusses frequency of accidental triggers primarily in relation to the Apple Watch and the HomePod speakers, neither of which are owned by the Plaintiffs.
Moreover, the article expressly states that only a “small portion” of daily Siri activations including were sent to contractors and that they included both deliberate and accidental activations. Finally, although the article describes private communications among the recordings sent to contractors, Plaintiffs allege no facts to suggest that their own private communications were intercepted by accidental triggers.
The Washington Post‘s Geoffrey A. Fowler recently did a spot check and discovered “more than a dozen” apps with “either misleading or flat-out inaccurate” privacy labels. One of these apps was a game called “Satisfying Slime Simulator,” which Fowler said was sending his iPhone’s advertising identifier and other device information to companies like Facebook, Google, and Unity, despite its privacy label indicating “No Data Collected.”
Fowler listed several other apps with “No Data Collected” labels that he found to be covertly collecting user data, such as Rumble, Maps.me, and FunDo Pro. He also found the popular game Match 3D to be “sending an ID for my phone that could be used to track me to more than a dozen different companies,” despite having a label that claimed it only took “data not linked to you.” Match 3D has since updated its label to reflect “data used to track you.”
In response to the report, Apple said it “conducts routine and ongoing audits of the information provided” and works with developers to correct any inaccuracies, adding that “apps that fail to disclose privacy information accurately may have future app updates rejected, or in some cases, be removed from the App Store entirely if they don’t come into compliance.”
This issue will be partially addressed by Apple’s upcoming enforcement of a privacy measure it calls App Tracking Transparency. Starting with the next betas of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, developers will be required to get a user’s permission to track their activity across other apps and websites and access their device’s random advertising identifier, known as the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), for targeted advertising and ad measurement purposes.
Apple said that, at the software level, App Tracking Transparency will prevent developers from accessing a user’s IDFA unless they grant permission, preventing an app from silently tracking their activity in this manner. However, there are still other ways for apps to track users, so the accuracy of privacy labels will still not be guaranteed.
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