I saw this on infinity for Reddit earlier, I don’t know if there’s a workaround for this or not.

100 points

They talk as if they’re protecting our privacy when it’s really a global surveillance net. The spin doctoring is insane.

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52 points
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Friendly reminder that Bluetooth has a larger network stack than Wi-Fi. Much more code, much larger available attack base. There have been many numerous Bluetooth vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution or theft of files.

This is truly becoming a surveillance state, in no way that can be debated. That want to be able to access everyone’s innermost thoughts (texts, notes, recordings, calendars, contacts, photos, you get it) without any chance of someone being able to protect against it.

Reminder that Google was the 2nd or 3rd company to commit to NSA’s PRISM program of feeding American’s data for future analysis.

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3 points

I really don’t disagree with you, but it’s so frustrating and tiring to try to work around all this stuff and use alternative tools that nobody else does, all while you’re viewed as a paranoid tinfoil hat wearer. Yes I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but I also don’t want to be alone forever.

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-1 points

Find a good girl that doesn’t mind. Mine doesn’t care at all, she has her interests and I have mine. I’ll sit there and listen to her 5 minute lectures on makeup and perfumes, and every once in a while I’ll tell her about a vulnerability or something cool I found, and I know she’s paying as much attention as I do about makeup, but at least I can understand the basics of makeup without years of experimentation and learning.

True, it makes it harder to stay secure when people around you don’t care or don’t know how, but its still possible. Just have to set some solid boundaries sometimes.

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3 points

all of this

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3 points

maybe humanity shouldn’t have written so many dystopian cyberpunk books and pieces of media, gave us all the wrong ideas :|

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6 points

Maybe we shouldn’t have handed our fucking lives over to corporations

Maybe they’re not ours til every single corpo is dead, and you should fight like the fucking dead to make this happen?

I dunno.

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20 points

“Privacy Sandbox” is just Google-controlled surveillance carried out with your phone/PC as the primary data provider. We’ve reached maximum perversion of the English language.

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3 points

this sort of gaslighting through corruption of vernacular used to amuse me, but now I feel like the withering wojak face anymore

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2 points
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are you referring to the new “Privacy Sandbox” or the old “Privacy Sandbox”. because if there calling this new thing a “Privacy Sandbox” after the old one lost public attention after they kept promising it for years, I am going to laugh or maybe cry.

what they originally called “Privacy Sandbox”

it was a browser feature to remove the HTTP cookie and replace it with a cohort system. your browser would receve signals about your habbits. that you were buying domino’s pizza and announce to upcoming sites that you like pizza, but ya know… in a “safe” way.

I still see, “chrome is going to replace the cookie” and “RIP the humble cookie” every once in a while.

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4 points

I’m pretty sure the old Privacy Sandbox was called FLoC, wasn’t it? This is definitely part of Google’s continued efforts to kill the (third-party) cookie in such a way that tracking your user activity will still be possible, but that Google itself will maximally benefit from because they’re the ones controlling how it’ll get implemented.

And given Google’s near-unilateral control of web browsing standards, who will say no? Their biggest partners? Mozilla?

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19 points

Straight up 1984 Newspeak, where the Ministry of Truth is really concerned with lies, the Ministry of Peace is concerned with war, the Ministry of Love is concerned with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty is concerned with starvation.

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5 points

It’s honestly Doublethink.

Whenever Google gets exposed for bad practices, people ignore it. And they believe this stuff is good or don’t care.

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3 points

Bruh, so when android phones are turned off they’ll still waste energy locating people and sharing the location. And most phones don’t have a removable battery! Fucking nuts.

Anti Commercial-AI license

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71 points

According to the posted link, the network can be turned off entirely if you wish, and you could just not use Google Play Services on your device, and that should also stop this.

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21 points

GrapheneOS w/o Google tools Schoulf be safe.

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11 points

It appears to require a Google account to do the tracking. So yeah, without Google services, you should be perfectly safe. Since you have no Google account registered on device and no services that run rogue in the background,

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14 points

If the Bluetooth module itself is still running, it will be trackable

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-9 points
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Removed by mod
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3 points
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I am aware that there are highly opinionated people in the graphineOS team. we had a scandal a while back that shook up the company (and I to the best of my understanding, kicked off/demoted some members, if its didn’t I’m getting another phone) a little while back. for being so important for my life and the lives of many others, the tightrope of maintaining trust that the OS is safe is unacceptably wobbly.

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2 points

“religious believer of Google and its vision”? can you show sources that explain this?

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18 points

While I like those options, they are definitely not for everyone. Those problems are collective, protecting the privacy of 1% of the population is as good as protecting nobody.

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11 points

That’s definitely true. We definitely need more people to care about their privacy as well.

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2 points

I think a growing number of “normal” people do, they are just less willing to make sacrifices for it than the types of people who populate this community, for example.

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4 points

Oh yeah, you can totally turn it off. 🤫😉

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2 points

On, that’s fine. I wouldn’t install that shit on my phone anyway.

As long as it’s not in AOSP, no problem

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50 points

the new google massive surveillance apparatus is ready to be deployed

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15 points

What do you think Google Maps and GSF are

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12 points

More like, already deployed, this is just the announcement.

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9 points

Apple already does it with their iPhone, just saying.

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1 point

I know

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4 points

It’s been on for years now. It’s just more effective now and will continue to get more intrusive.

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36 points

Where is that mentioned? I can’t find that in the article

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23 points

I also couldn’t find a mention, and it definitely does not make sense (and likely isn’t even possible) to run Bluetooth without Android itself running

…which uses a crowdsourced device-locating network to help you find your lost or misplaced devices and belongings quickly – even when they’re offline.

Maybe this line is being misinterpreted?

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2 points

It’s definitely possible. It may be using specific hardware to do the powered off tasks. Or it never be truly off, a small os running to managing these powered off tasks.

The second is more likely, it’s cheaper and easier. It can also be applied to older devices and requires less integrated design.

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15 points

It’s mentioned in the linked article about Find My Device.

This is what it says

1. Locate offline devices

Locate your compatible Android phone and tablet by ringing them or viewing their location on a map in the app — even when they’re offline. And thanks to specialized Pixel hardware, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro owners will also be able to find their devices if they’re powered off or the battery is dead.

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13 points

I don’t know that means Bluetooth will be running when the device is off. “Specialized hardware” could mean a full Bluetooth modem on backup power, but more likely it’s means there’s a low power beacon. Would be interesting if anyone does a teardown of the Pixel 8.

For non-Pixel 8 devices, definitely not. I assume “Offline” refers to the case where your device doesn’t have WiFi/LTE, but can still use Bluetooth to communicate with devices that do.

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3 points

That is why we took our time when designing the new Find My Device, which uses a crowdsourced device-locating network to help you find your lost or misplaced devices and belongings quickly – even when they’re offline.

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9 points

That doesn’t say that. Although the article linked from there does, for Pixels.

And thanks to specialized Pixel hardware, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro owners will also be able to find their devices if they’re powered off or the battery is dead.

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3 points

even with a dead battery? how? there must be something ‘turned on’ to send bluetooth signals or is this magic?

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34 points

Didn’t iPhone been doing it for years so you can still track your lost phone even if it’s turned off?

But this is Android, I’m sure there’ll be work around if you don’t want it. Personally I think it could be helpful.

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9 points

You turn it off. It says so in the link.

User Controls: Android users always have full control over which of their devices participate in the Find My Device network and how those devices participate. Users can either stick with the default and contribute to aggregated location reporting, opt into contributing non-aggregated locations, or turn the network off altogether.

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1 point

Right, Google definitely a man of their words. Like they are definitely not record anything in your Incognito Chrome tabs.

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6 points
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Didn’t iPhone been doing it for years

You’re trying to describe an action that has started in the past and is still taking place. “Didn’t” is simple past which indicates a concluded action. The correct tense you’d want to use here is present perfect progressive --> “Hasn’t iPhone been doing it for years”.

Edit: Although, I missed the “been” in your sentence, so you just picked the wrong verb. Not too far off 👍

Anti Commercial-AI license

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4 points
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I have some more questions, teacher

If I lived in a country for some years/time, how do I say that?

Also, if I worked as somebody?

And in general, difference between have been and had been?

Thank you

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8 points
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And in general, difference between have been and had been?

I’ll answer this because the two previous questions depend on what you want to express. Just a note before-hand, the best site for English grammar I know is ego4u.

First the quick answer:

  • have been --> present perfect progressive: an action that took place in the past and continued until recently or is still continuing
  • had been --> [past perfect progressive]: an action that started in the past and continued until some point in time in the past

Longer answer:

Conceptually, there are a limited number of possible tenses. Here is a picture from ego4u

Let’s say you want to tell a story. There are the static states you can describe

  • Something is in a certain state right now e.g the person is alive, the table is on the second floor, life is great --> that’s the simple present
  • In the past something happened and the action was completed e.g I stood there, the pool was filled, the plane got loud --> that’s the simple past
  • A thing is in the future or there is an intent to do something in the future e.g we will be there, the train will be on time, they are going to have a party in the hotel --> simple future. Notice the use of will and going to. Those are two ways to express the simple future.

So, now that we’ve expressed a state, something that is unchanging, we would like to describe changing actions are particular strips in time:

  • Actions that are currently taking place and ongoing e.g the person is living, the table is standing on the second floor, life is going great --> present progressive. Notice the difference from simple present above. The action is ongoing.
  • A thing that’s going on in the past: I was standing there, the pool was being filled, the plane was getting loud --> past progressive. Again, compare with simple past from above
  • Something in the future is changing: we will be standing there, the train will be waiting on time, they are going to be partying in the hotel --> future progressive

Alright, we have expressed points in time both static and changing, but what about actions that happen just before those points in time? They concluded or may be still happening. We call those “perfect” tenses.

  • the person has lived here for ages, the table has stood on the second floor, life has been great --> present perfect
  • I had stood there, the pool had been filled, the plane had gotten loud --> past perfect aka something that happened before a thing in the past
  • we will have stood there, the train will have waited on time, they will have partied in the hotel --> future perfect = an future past action or action that will be the past in the future

And finally, if we look at the diagram we see one last group of progressives - perfect progressive. Remember, progressive describe something that’s still ongoing at the point in time. You may ask why they are needed when the “perfect” overlaps with the progressive - something that started before a point in time and continues to happen.
Well, that difference might be lost with time as they tend to become less and less important. A grammar purist might disagree but in colloquial English, my experience shows less and less people can tell the difference and I do have to look it up:

The difference between “perfect” and “perfect progressive” is the focus of the tense. “Perfect” makes the result important and “perfect progressive” makes the duration or fluidity / continuity of the action important. I invite you to read this page on Present Perfect Simple vs Present Perfect Progressive. It explains it quite well.


Hopefully that will help you answer your two first questions.

Anti Commercial-AI license

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3 points

Thanks, this actually helpful.

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5 points

I’m sure there’ll be work around if you don’t want it.

Take the battery out of the phone. No battery no energy to run bluetooth

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14 points

phone batteries used to be removable on the user level. hasn’t been that way in like 10 years.

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11 points

There still are phones that can do this, and from 2027, all phones sold in the EU must allow user-replacement of batteries.

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3 points

Privacy

!privacy@lemmy.ml

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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