Two's company ⭐️⭐️

Just like we humans are strongly influenced by the presence of companions over the course of our lives, so are stars, literally.

The pair of points at the centre of this image, taken with our VLT, are an old stellar couple known as AFGL 4106.

https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2608a/

📷 ESO/G. Tomassini et al.

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

Look, Jeff Atwood, it is difficult to take you seriously when you write authoritatively on a subject you clearly don’t understand.

GDPR doesn’t mandate cookie notices.

Cookie notices are *malicious compliance* by the surveillance-driven adtech industry.

If you’re not tracking people, you do not need a cookie notice, period.

If you’re only using first-party cookies for functional reasons, you do not need a cookie notice, period.

If you’re using third-party cookies to track people – i.e., if you’re sharing their data with others – then *you must have their consent to do so*. Because, otherwise, you are violating their privacy. Even then, the law doesn’t mandate a cookie notice.

How would you conform to EU law without a cookie notice if your aim wasn’t malicious compliance?

You would not track people by default and you would make it so they have to go your site’s settings to turn on third-party tracking if, for some inexplicable reason, they wanted that “feature”.

Boom!

No cookie notice necessary.

What’s that?

But that would destroy your business because your business is founded on the fundamental mechanic of violating people’s privacy?

Good.

Your business doesn’t deserve to exist.

Because the real bullshit here isn’t EU legislation that protects the human right to privacy, it’s the toxic Silicon Valley/Big Tech business model of farming people for data that violates everyone’s privacy and opens the door to technofascism.

https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/115120175033311443

I read this article today and quite liked it

https://www.drewlyton.com/story/the-future-is-not-self-hosted/

An analogy came to mind when reading it: if the cloud is feudalism, self hosted is sustenance farming.

Sustenance farming… Well, it sucks, it’s brutal, it’s awful. No wonder people want centralized infrastructure! Groceries aren’t a concept in sustenance farming, neither is something like “food sensitivities”—you just die or accept the feudalism because you have no other choice.

Some people happen to like sustenance farming and the idea of living fully off the grid! But they’re not normal. That’s fine, but it’s not workable for most people and carries an enormous amount of unstated privilege. For example: the person in the article casually buying a server and dropping a few thousand dollars on it, setting up several complicated systems in it, and “only” spending a few weeks of free time doing so? Privileged. Fun hobby if you like that, though!

The bad part, in my opinion, is that our only choices are currently techno fascism… Or the sustenance farming that killed almost everyone who attempted it. That’s not a great set of choices and it doesn’t have to be like that.

I liked the reference to community clouds in the ending of the article. It reminded me very much of Common Pool Resources that Elinor Ostrom talks about, or the emergent strategy of adrienne marie brown. I need to read more Ursula Franklin, but I suspect her writing is right at home here too.

I’d like to live in a world where communities uplift and support each other and are able to do so. I’m doing my best to help make that a reality, even if I’ve had to spend the last year or two putting my own mask on first :)