Never had anyone download from any IA torrents I've hosted. I'd say only do it if it's something you have a reason to believe will be taken down at some point. Whether that be from government censorship, for copyright reasons, etc.
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It runs autonomously to a degree, but a lot of these sites operate via posting a wide variety of content on the same domains, after those domains have previously gained status in search engines.
So for example, you'll have a site like epiccoolcarnews[.]info hosting stuff like "How to get FREE GEMS in Clash of Clans" just because previously they posted an article about cars that Google thought was good so they ranked up the domain in their ranking algorithm.
Permanently downrank the domain, and eventually they have to start with a new domain that, as is the key part here, has no prior reputation, and thus has to work to actually get ranked up in search again.
They're also going to be making this a public database, and have said they'll use it to train AI-generated content detection tools that will probably be better at detecting "AI generated articles meant to appear legitimate by using common keywords and phrases", rather than just "any text of any form that has been generated by AI" like other AI detection tools do, which would make them capable of automating the process a bit with regard to specifically search engines.
It wouldn't stop rich people from just paying and moving on, but rich people aren't the ones being targeted here.
The vast majority of vehicle purchasers are regular people that are still relatively sensitive to price increases. It's car manufacturers that have regularly raised the footprint of their cars, whether that's to advertise a larger truck bed than their competitors, to add more legroom, or just to make their car look beefier/cooler than the competition.
They do this because it gets them more sales.
If the vast majority of people will suddenly be hit with an additional cost just to own that type of vehicle, manufacturers will stop making as many of them, and focus on designs with smaller footprints, because that then allows them to advertise a lower cost by saying "lower footprint, lower fees."
Even if the wealthy are willing to pay more for their big cars, they not only make up just a fraction of the overall market, but they can't even be doing that if manufacturers stop making big cars.
The wealthy drive many markets, but the collective mass of people that care very much about prices do, too.
They also literally just released SlopStop as a community-based filtering mechanism that'll downrank AI slop, with the CEO saying "We believe AI slop is an existential threat to an internet that should belong to humans. This is the first step towards our ultimate goal: to kill AI slop so you never see it again."
Apparently they'll be using this to train something that can identify AI slop better based on the database of user-reported sites, and they'll be making the database open.
Their AI integration philosophy feels incredibly reasonable to me with how out of the way it is, how it properly cites its sources and shows how much of the answer each one influenced, and how the search results are often so good it doesn't even feel like you need the AI model, and this just sweetens the deal.
I can understand having issues with Kagi, they're a company, after all, but their stance and actions feel very good thus far.
That concern I can get.
While I don't think Mozilla is currently doing anything I'd say is super objectionable, or really Facebook-like, they could certainly move more that direction in the future, and then I'd have a problem with it.
I don't have a problem with ads as a method of funding something, as long as you can either disable/block them, or pay to have them removed, but I think they should be a last resort, not a primary source of revenue, lest Firefox turn into a browser that just crams ads in every single spot it can until the browsing experience is garbage.
This fight wasn't about SNAP, it was about the fucking healthcare. These SNAP recipients are talking about how they endured these SNAP cuts and felt it was worth it because in the end they would get their healthcare back.
There was literally a court battle in progress that would have forced Trump to pay the SNAP benefits regardless of the shutdown, and they couldn't even wait for the outcome.
Now, there are no extensions for ACA credits, and the Democrats have lost their single biggest point of leverage to force any other legislation.
To repeat that, in essence, the Democrats just traded slightly sooner SNAP payments that would have already been required to happen in exchange for nothing. That is why people are so angry about this. Hope this helps.
Yes, that's the thing:
Facebook doesn't "sell" your information either.
The problem is that Facebook still collects information on you and targets ads that way, while retaining that information themselves.
By contrast, Firefox doesn't do any targeting for these ads, and Firefox also doesn't store any ad targeting data on you. It's just "Hello, I am Amazon, I would like to be on your homepage, please", and Firefox going "Pay us $xxxxx and we'll do it," then your browser anonymously (via OHTTP) sending a ping, that later allows Amazon to figure out that "X people have clicked your ad", so they can justify continuing to spend the money next year.
Yes, Amazon doesn't get your info, but neither does Mozilla. Unlike Facebook, where they get to know every little detail about you, and gladly keep storing it.
They're selling "someone, somewhere clicked your ad". That's it. No other data about you is ever sent.
You seem to be pretty hell-bent on defending Mozilla here. You work for them or something?
Nope. (though for transparency, I have briefly talked to someone who does currently work for them) I just want my browser to continue being funded, and if they can do something that is extremely privacy-preserving that doesn't rely on Google (who gives them the majority of their money) for revenue, then I will be in favor of that existing as an option, and I won't justify acting as though "ping that says someone somewhere clicked this ad" is the same as "we have received money in exchange for giving up your browsing history"
They started out more idealistic, but then they realized that things are expensive and there’s money to be made, so they sold out a little. It happens.
Which is unfortunate. I wish they didn't have to do things like this, because at the end of the day, ads are still ads. I just think that it's silly to say that they are selling your information, when the information being sold is in no way identifying, which is why I think I'm coming off as defensive here. (sorry for that, I'm bad at doing tone in replies online)
The alternative is just Mozilla paywalling features, heavily pushing other in-house ones like their VPN (which is just Mullvad but more expensive), or having to be more dependent on Google, and I don't want that. This just feels incredibly reasonable to me in comparison.
There's a lot of issues with that analysis.
Oh and they own a t-shirt factory
The linked article literally states that they partnered with a small print shop, not that they own it. It says they bought warehouse space to store and fulfill orders. Now granted, yes, spending that much money on T-shirts can be a bad idea financially, but they do act as marketing because they get people talking, even if the brand name isn't on the shirt. This recoups the cost over time.
Kagi also heavily relies on organic marketing, so it makes total sense.
First of all, as a project, Kagi stretches itself way too thin. "Kagi" isn't just Kagi Search, it's also a whole slew of AI tools, a Mac-only web browser called Orion, and right now they are planning on launching an email service as well.
The AI tools are easily deployed and based on standard open-source tooling. Not that hard to maintain, yet their AI integrations are genuinely much better than the competition, which draws in a lot of people who pay for their higher-priced plan just for heavy AI users.
Orion is a fork, with minimal additional bloat. Again, not terribly hard to maintain.
None of these projects are particularly profitable, so it's not a case of one subsidizing the other
Their entire business model is based around a subscription. No individual service is "profitable," it's just "part of what you get for your subscription."
and when they announced Kagi Email even their most dedicated userbase (aka the types who hang around in a discord for a search engine) seemed largely disinterested.
Granted, though the hardest part for this is just making a frontend, which they've already done. There are many free and open source backends for hosting email services. They haven't promoted it heavily, and my assumption is because they're keeping it more on the down-low until they fix bugs, build out more features, and are sure it's something they can more heavily advertise.
Kagi was not paying sales tax for two years and they finally have to pay up. They just...didn't do it. Didn't think it was important? I have no idea why. Their reactions made it sound like they owed previous taxes, not that they just now had to pay them. They genuinely made it sound like they only just now realized they needed to figure out sales tax. It's a baffling thing to me and it meant a change in prices for users that some people were not thrilled with.
And they later explained it's because there's a threshold of buyers you have to pass before paying sales tax, and they did not know if they would ever pass that mark, and later had to scramble due to new user growth to make that happen.
Like most search now Kagi has chosen to include Instant Answers that are AI generated, which means they're often wrong
The vast majority of my answers from Kagi's AI were right, when other search engines were all wrong. (yes, I did actually check real sources to confirm) This is just a strawman of reality. Kagi even shows you what % of the LLM's response was derived from which source, whereas others leave you in the dark.
But the developers of Kagi fully believe that this is what search engines should be, a bunch of AI tools so that you don't even need to read primary sources anymore.
Oh, is that why Kagi said in the post also linked by the author of that post: "Large language models (LLMs) should not be blindly trusted to provide factual information accurately. They have a significant risk of generating incorrect information or fabricating details", "AI should be used to enhance the search experience, not to create it or replace it", and "AI should be used to the extent that it enhances our humanity, not diminish it (AI should be used to support users, not replace them)"
I'm not gonna keep going through every single thing point-by-point here since that'd take forever, but a lot of this is basically just taking minor issues, like the CEO posting about hopeful uses of AI, or talking about completely normal expectations to have of privacy when you trust a company with information, then blowing it out of proportion and acting as though this is a death blow for the service.
The author of the post quite literally talks about how "Kagi's dedication to privacy falls apart for me", saying they don't seem to actually care about user privacy... when just a few months later, they released Privacy Pass, which allows you to cryptographically prove you have a membership without revealing your identity, and to continue using Kagi that way. Not really something someone who doesn't care about privacy would do.
Overall, this just reads to me as:
- They could be doing bad financially because of these decisions I didn't like them doing
- Okay so they said they were profitable currently even after all that but now they're doing too many things (which could all bring in new users that would pay them)
- Okay so people are paying for and using the things but there's no way they could possibly use AI in any good way
- I've now ignored anybody saying the tools are actually better than others or are working well, but just in case you're not convinced, they don't care about privacy!
- I know they explained the ways in which companies are going to get data on you and there is going to be a degree of trust when using a service that requires things like payment information but I still think they don't actually care about privacy!
I'm not saying all the points are completely false or don't mean anything, but a lot of this really does feel like just taking something relatively small (giving out a bunch of T-shirts during a time the company is primarily trying to grow its user count via organic marketing), acting as though it's both the current and permanent future position of the entire company and will also lead to the worst possible outcome, then moving on to another thing, and doing that until there's nothing left to complain about.
Kagi can have its own problems, but a lot of these just aren't it.
As a person using Kagi myself:
- The search results are the best I've ever had. period, full stop.
- The AI models are commonly correct, good at citing sources, out of the way till you ask for them, and feel secondary to the search experience
- The cost is more than reasonable
- Regular small updates with new tools have been incredibly nice to have (such as the Kagi news feed, which is great at sourcing good news from a variety of sources, or the Universal Summarizer, which is great at providing alternative, more natural sounding and accurate translations compared to Google Translate or DeepL)
I haven't really had any complaints, and contrasting it with this guy's post, it just reads like someone complaining about something they've never even used. Yes, you can complain about something you haven't yourself used, but the entire post is just "here's anything even minor that I think could be an issue if it were taken to the extremes"
"Selling personal data" and "selling ads that we can tell if they are clicked by an anonymous user" are completely different, in my eyes at least.
"Selling personal data" sounds like someone taking your personally identifiable information and giving it to someone for money. What they're doing isn't that, so they're not "selling personal data"
They're selling ad views, not your information.
Not in all cases.
As an example, Firefox has the option of sponsored results, which send anonymized technical data when a link is clicked, essentially just saying "hey, this got an ad click, add it to the total." It doesn't send info about you, your identity, or your other browsing habits.
This counts as a "sale" even though no actual identifying information about you was exchanged. They mention this in the paragraphs I attached, when they talk about data sent via OHTTP.
I don't think any reasonable person would consider a packet being sent saying "some unknown user, somewhere in the world clicked your sponsored post" as "selling your personal information", but that's how the CCPA could be used to classify it, so to avoid getting in legal trouble, Firefox can't technically say that they "never sell your data", even if that's the extent of it.
Kagi has a great little feed you can use to randomly explore smallweb blogs. I'd recommend it!
As an example, here's this site dedicated to cataloguing the different variations of Disney park trash cans!https://www.magicaltrash.com/
Important context!
They had to change this because newer laws like the CCPA classify some ways of transferring/processing data as a "sale", even if no money is exchanged.
See: this Firefox FAQ where they say:
The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”
In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.
Physical mail generally isn't under surveillance past occasional package inspection (e.g. an X-ray of a suspicious package), and the rare targeted government surveillance operation on an individual or group, at least for the contents of mail.
The U.S Postal Inspection Service has a number of data sources they do collect from, though. If you make a USPS account, for example, then they can get info like your credit card number and IP address. If your package has a tracking number assigned, they can tell where exactly your mail is in transit. And if your address and the sender's address is on your mail, then they will of course know who sent you which piece of mail when. Pretty standard stuff.
In terms of actually inspecting what's inside people's mail, that's very difficult, because mail isn't standardized. Some envelopes will have one small sheet of paper. Some will have a larger folded one. That might be folded into 2 pieces or 4. It might be 3 sheets of paper. Maybe it has a smaller paper card inside as well. You get the idea.
Whereas internet traffic is based on actual standards, and so if they want to know the contents of the data in an HTTP request, for example, they know exactly which parts of the packets to look at, every single time.
It would make surveillance more difficult, for sure, because individually opening, scanning, and putting back any possible variant of mail in envelopes is very time consuming and difficult, but it would do absolutely nothing to stop targeted surveillance of given individuals, and would also make individual associations more apparent.
To give another example, the government doesn't know which people are communicating with which other people if you use Signal, because not even Signal knows, so not even a court order could allow them to find out. If you were sending mail between all those people, the government now has a list of every single time you sent a letter, and to whom.
Using that same example, with Signal, the contents of your message is encrypted. With mail, it's in plaintext. Anybody could read that. If they intercept the data from your Signal chats, they get encrypted nonsense. If they intercept your mail, they get your entire conversation.
The smart decision is to use tools that preserve privacy and anonymity, making surveillance near impossible, rather than a system like mail, which just makes surveillance annoying and time-consuming.
the article says they're comparing it to their earnings and likelihood to switch jobs among other things.
Two things that are coincidentally lower (in terms of pay) and higher (in terms of propensity to switch jobs) for black people, rather than white people.
They just use the buzzword "AI", but in reality it's probably going to be a machine learning algorithm.
Take the dataset, split out the groups of people you do/don't want to hire based on whatever criteria, train the model to be more likely to pick faces with characteristics from the "do hire" group, and less likely to pick those from the "don't hire" group.
Then, use it on real people, and it will provide similar outcomes based on faces.
The study claims that they analyzed participants' labor market outcomes, that being earnings and propensity to move jobs, "among other things."
Fun fact, did you know white men tend to get paid more than black men for the same job, with the same experience and education?
Following that logic, if we took a dataset of both black and white men, then used their labor market outcomes to judge which one would be a good fit over another, white men would have higher earnings and be recommended for a job more than black people.
Black workers are also more likely to switch jobs, one of the reasons likely being because you tend to experience higher salary growth when moving jobs every 2-3 years than when you stay with a given company, which is necessary if you're already being paid lower wages than your white counterparts.
By this study's methodology, that person could be deemed "unreliable" because they often switch jobs, and would then not be considered.
Essentially, this is a black box that gets to excuse management saying "fuck all black people, we only want to hire whites" while sounding all smart and fancy.
Still consumerism. The acquisition of goods and services, especially beyond what's required for survival.
And, even buying secondhand doesn't eliminate impacts from consumerism. It reduces the amount of available secondhand goods, which means someone else that could otherwise buy secondhand is now forced to buy new.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad people are buying secondhand, but it's not a solution when demand is ever-increasing.
I don't think so, but he did say while testifying: “He did it. He threw the sandwich,” that the sandwich "exploded all over" his chest and he felt it through his ballistic vest, and that "You could smell the onions and the mustard".
The sandwich never left its wrapper.
The defense attorney finished closing arguments with “This case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is about a sandwich”
It all depends on your threat model.
As far as I'm aware, LineageOS still doesn't support verified boot, meaning the system remains unencrypted and is more at risk of tampering. GrapheneOS does encrypt many parts of the system, as well as implementing other security and privacy features. This means if your phone was to be taken by police at a protest, or stolen by a thief with some technical knowledge, the LineageOS phone could be easily broken into, whereas the GrapheneOS one wouldn't.
GrapheneOS adds many additional features to prevent apps from exploiting your system, allows you to disable app network access the moment it's installed rather than digging around settings menus or using ADB like LineageOS can need, and it's considered essentially the most secure and private, yet feature complete Android ROM you can get nowadays.
Pixels simply have many more hardware security features than essentially every other OEM, and supporting only Pixels means Graphene's team can focus on making those work the best. By contrast, LineageOS essentially has to support most phone models, which means sacrificing some stability and security improvements.
From the perspective of privacy, irrespective of security, GrapheneOS will still be better. It's an OS built with the purpose being privacy at its core, with everything built around that. LineageOS is primarily built to extend the lifetime of devices, with the added benefit that Google Play isn't pre-installed and given full privileged access by default.
If your threat model is just to reduce data being collected about you by large corporations, LineageOS will probably do an okay job at that. If you want to maximize the amount of your privacy that you protect from both corporations, and any given actor, whether that be someone shoulder surfing to get your pin, or police cracking your phone with a Cellebrite machine, GrapheneOS will always be a better bet, even if it's just you trying to protect your data from corporate entities.
I will point out, while Pixels don't have expandable storage, you can always use a dual-port adapter for your phone's USB-C port to get both charging and audio jack ports at the same time, and you can add multiple SIMs, as long as it's an eSIM. I've had 2 eSIMs on my GrapheneOS-flashed Pixel phones at the same time, and it's worked fine so far.
In the end, I'd just say, if you just want Google to have less data on you, and you just want less bloatware, and you refuse to get a Pixel because of the aforementioned tradeoffs for you, then just use LineageOS. It's better than stock. If you care about your privacy all around, and want more hardware and software security features, faster security patches, and more assurances of your privacy, go with GrapheneOS.