Online privacy for Chrome and other browsers

Google has recently implemented a gigantic scam to harvest personal information and monetize it. The chances are recent and touted by Google as for privacy, even thought it is for loss of privacy. The Register writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has urged folks to switch off several Privacy Sandbox settings in Google Chrome to mask their online habits, or to consider switching to Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari.

Chrome's Privacy Sandbox is neither private – preventing one from being observed – nor a sandbox – an environment in which code can be executed in isolation. Rather it's a suite of advertising, analytics, anti-spam, and anti-tracking technologies. The goal for some of these is to replace third-party cookies.

Third-party cookies, because they harm privacy by permitting people to be tracked online, are scheduled to be phased out next year in Chrome. But the online advertising industry isn't entirely sold on Google's replacement technology, and it may be that antitrust cases or other regulatory pressure will lead websites away from Privacy Sandbox and toward industry-backed ad tech like IAB's Seller Defined Audiences.

Google says its Privacy Sandbox has five major goals: fighting spam and fraud on the web; showing relevant ads and content; measuring digital ads; strengthening cross-site privacy boundaries; and limiting covert tracking.

"Topics is a response to pushback against Google’s proposed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which we called 'a terrible idea' because it gave Google even more control over advertising in its browser while not truly protecting user privacy," said Thorin Klosowski, EFF security and privacy activist, in a web essay.

Mozilla and Apple have rejected Topics in Firefox and Safari respectively due to privacy concerns. And earlier this year, the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the web's technical body, panned Topics for being opaque and diminishing user control.

"Google referring to any of this as 'privacy' is deceiving," said the foundation's Klosowski.

"Even if it's better than third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox is still tracking, it's just done by one company instead of dozens. Instead of waffling between different tracking methods, even with mild improvements, we should work towards a world without behavioral ads."

Klosowski explains that for those who won't give up Chrome there's a way to opt out of Topics, of ad retargeting, and of giving advertisers storage space in your browser for ad performance data. Doing so requires navigating through Chrome's three-dot icon to the ad privacy settings page: (⋮) > Settings > Privacy & Security > Ad Privacy. Or copy this URL chrome://settings/adPrivacy into the address bar and press enter.

Once there, he advises disabling Ad topics, Site-suggested ads, and Ad measurement.  

The EFF also makes Privacy Badger, a browser extension for blocking tracking scripts that was just recently updated to remove tracking links. 

A related story discusses the EFF's Privacy Badger:

We released a new version of Privacy Badger that updates how we fight “link tracking” across a number of Google products. With this update Privacy Badger removes tracking from links in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Images results. Privacy Badger now also removes tracking from links added after scrolling through Google Search results.

Link tracking is a creepy surveillance tactic that allows a company to follow you whenever you click on a link to leave its website. As we wrote in our original announcement of Google link tracking protection, Google uses different techniques in different browsers. The techniques also vary across Google products. One common link tracking approach surreptitiously redirects the outgoing request through the tracker’s own servers. There is virtually no benefit 1 for you when this happens. The added complexity mostly just helps Google learn more about your browsing.

It's been a few years since our original release of Google link tracking protection. Things have changed in the meantime. For example, Google Search now dynamically adds results as you scroll the page ("infinite scroll" has mostly replaced distinct pages of results). Google Hangouts no longer exists! This made it a good time for us to update Privacy Badger’s first party tracking protections.

Privacy Badger is downloadable here. The commentary at that site: 

Privacy Badger automatically learns to block invisible trackers. Instead of keeping lists of what to block, Privacy Badger automatically discovers trackers based on their behavior. Privacy Badger sends the Global Privacy Control signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling, and the Do Not Track signal to tell companies not to track you. If trackers ignore your wishes, Privacy Badger will learn to block them. 

 Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger replaces potentially useful trackers (video players, comments widgets, etc.) with click-to-activate placeholders, and removes outgoing link click tracking on Facebook and Google, with more privacy protections on the way. To learn more, see our FAQ at https://privacybadger.org/#faq

An interesting water desalination advance

The boffins at MIT have come up with a desalination device that runs on sunlight and the laws physics. No electricity is required, so this thing operates completely off the grid.  They have designed a box a square meter in size (~10.8 sq ft) that can produce 5 liters of drinkable water per hour from seawater. The system can operate for several years without maintenance. The price for the water is less than the average US price for tap water. The system should be scalable to very large sizes.

A tilted ten-stage prototype floating in a salt water container -- the

tilt is needed to passively create water circulation which

prevents salt from accumulating and clogging the system

MIT News writes:

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system. 

The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.  

The small circulations generated in the team’s new system is similar to the “thermohaline” convection in the ocean — a phenomenon that drives the movement of water around the world, based on differences in sea temperature (“thermo”) and salinity (“haline”).

“When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight drives water to evaporate. Once water leaves the surface, salt remains. And the higher the salt concentration, the denser the liquid, and this heavier water wants to flow downward,” Zhang explains. “By mimicking this kilometer-wide phenomena in small box, we can take advantage of this feature to reject salt.”

The research paper is here (behind a paywall). A figure from the paper shows more clearly how the device works. The paper comments:

Using a confined saline layer as an evaporator, we initiate strong thermohaline convection to mitigate salt accumulation and enhance heat transfer. With a ten-stage device, we achieve record-high solar-to-water efficiencies of 322%–121% in the salinity range of 0–20 wt % under one-sun illumination. More importantly, we demonstrate an extreme resistance to salt accumulation with 180-h continuous desalination of 20 wt % concentrated seawater. With high freshwater production and extreme salt endurance, our device significantly reduces the water production cost, paving a pathway toward the practical adoption of passive solar desalination for sustainable water economy.

I believe the following to be true.........

 I would say I have noticed a noticeable decline in political engagements amongst my friends, associates, family over the last few years. So the following doesn't surprise me.............

Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share

Granted, the above is from 2020 but I could not find more recent data. I still believe it to be true. People I used to kibitz with on politics don't want to express their views as openly any more, especially in politically mixed company.

Has your experience been the same OR are you surrounded by political debaters?

MORE:

Implications

Taking these results together indicates that a significant majority of Americans with diverse political views and backgrounds self‐​censor their political opinions. This large number from across demographic groups suggests withheld opinions may not simply be radical or fringe perspectives in the process of being socially marginalized. Instead many of these opinions may be shared by a large number of people. Opinions so widely shared are likely shaping how people think about salient policy issues and ultimately impacting how they vote. But if people feel they cannot discuss these important policy matters, such views will not have an opportunity to be scrutinized, understood, or reformed.

Tina again: No, I don't know why

Computer speakers are worthless crap. Put on your head phones and set your equalizer to do this right, or just blow it off.

Barcelona 1990

A church house, gin house

A school house, outhouse

On Highway Number Nineteen

The people keep the city clean

They call it Nutbush

Oh, Nutbush

Call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Twenty-five was the speed limit

Motorcycle not allowed in it

You go t'the store on Fridays

You go to church on Sundays

They call it Nutbush, little old town

Oh, Nutbush

They call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

You go t'the field on week days

And have a picnic on Labor Day

You go to town on Saturdays

But go to church ev'ry Sunday

They call it Nutbush

Oh, Nutbush

They call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Oh

No whiskey for sale

You get caught, no bail

Salt pork and molasses

Is all you get in jail

They call it Nutbush (little old place) 

Oh, Nutbush

Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Yeah, they call it Nutbush city

Nutbush city limits

Little old town in Tennessee

It's called a quiet, little old community

A one-horse town

You have to watch

What you're puttin' down in old Nutbush

They call it Nutbush

Young Tina raw & white hot alive in1973 -- this is the one one I grew up with & it's about as real as music can get short of . . . . something big:

Of course, as usual, that's just my humble opinion.

News bits: Prenup renegotiated into a postnup?; Government shutdown update; Anger biology

A source called Page Six (presumably not a satire site?) reports that Malaria has quietly renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with her deranged fornicating husband DJT and turned it into a postnup. Page Six reports:

Sources tell Page Six that Melania Trump has “quietly” renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with Donald Trump in advance of his potentially serving a second term in the White House.

An insider told us of the agreement between the couple who married in 2005, “Over the last year, Melania and her team have been quietly negotiating a new ‘postnup’ agreement between herself and Donald Trump.”

The source further said, “This is at least the third time Melania has renegotiated the terms of her marital agreement,” but the source added that it’s not because the former first lady is going anywhere.

“Melania is most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son, Barron,” 17, the same source familiar with Melania, 53, told Page Six.

The new agreement also provides for Melania, and spans money and property, according to the source.

Well, if this is for real, and it just might be, this changes everything. Malaria will be dutifully campaigning in public and spreading the good news of the Gospel of Trump. You know the Gospel, lots of praise for tyranny, plenty of defense of corruption, lies and slanders, all of which is heavily larded with crackpot conspiracies and Looney Toons reasoning from the Book of Looney. 

The loving family

Look at Barron, all growed up

He'll take after his toss 'em under the bus dad and 

make a fine businessman and US president

😮☠️

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Welp chaos fans, looks like we're very likely headed for a govt. shutdown. WaPo writes:

Hard-liners plot to replace McCarthy with a deputy as shutdown looms

A contingent of far-right House Republicans is plotting an attempt to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker as early as next week, a move that would throw the chamber into further disarray in the middle of a potential government shutdown, according to four people familiar with the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Some members of the far-right faction of the party are coalescing around nominating a member of McCarthy’s leadership team, Rep. Tom Emmer (Minn.), to be the next speaker if they can successfully oust McCarthy, according to those people. The members think Emmer is more attuned to their concerns and will better deliver conservative results.

By referring to far-right Repubs, the WaPo inches toward calling the GOP what it actually is, deeply corrupt and radical right authoritarian. WaPo's not quite there yet, but maybe awareness of what the ARRRP has degenerated into will sink in sometime before its too late. I guess this counts as a little bit of progress.

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The WaPo writes about anger science by a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst:

Our emotional brain goes into overdrive, and our thinking brain becomes less active. Managing anger requires us to bring our thinking brain back online.

• the amygdala, which encodes the quality — such as positive or negative feelings — and intensity of our emotional reactions; and

• the insula, which creates a brain map of how our body feels during situations, including what we call “gut feelings.”

The degree of activity in the amygdala and the insula is controlled, in part, by two areas of the thinking brain:

• the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which helps us weigh the consequences of our behaviors before acting on them; and

• the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which helps us empathize with others.

The more we use our thinking brain to evaluate our behaviors, including how they might affect others, the more we can guide decisions in balanced ways.

Strategies to respond differently when anger starts to take over:

• Pause. Find a space where the ability to think can be recovered. Step away, remain silent, ask for time. Hard as it is to consider in the heat of the moment, acting aggressively — as cathartic as it might feel — is often not worth it. Map out the progression of your anger by identifying cues in the body, mind and environment signaling it’s time to step back before things worsen.

• Breathe. The only vital sign over which we have more immediate control is breathing. High emotions can push us to have quick, shallow breaths, feeding into our distress. Try slowing your breathing down, with long in-breaths and out-breaths (timing each helps maintain a rhythm and sense of stillness). Controlled breathing can limit respiratory rate, improve mood, lower stress hormone levels, decrease physical unease and help us think more calmly, improving recruitment of brain areas that process emotions.

• See anger as communication. There is often a context to anger, whether directed at ourselves, another person or a situation. For instance, we might feel pressured, exposed, belittled, anxious or powerless, and anger can cover up these unpleasant states, giving us a sense of power — fragile as it may be. Thinking about what lies behind anger can help us feel less at its mercy and provide insight as to what other emotions we may be trying to avoid. When feeling angry at someone, it is useful to consider why that particular dynamic generates such unpleasantness. As much as we’re overtaken by the righteousness of our mind-set, anger can blind us to different ways others view the same situation.

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Is Biden waking up to the ARRRP threat? Seems that maybe he is finally starting to get it. WaPo writes:

President Biden on Thursday sharply rebuked former president Donald Trump and his supporters for continued attempts to undermine American democracy, delivering one of his most explicit warnings that Trump poses a threat to democratic principles and institutions.

In a marked shift, Biden hit Trump head-on, disposing of his usual pattern of oblique references to his predecessor, .... Biden called Trump out by name before detailing what he described as his anti-democratic behavior: relentless attacks on the press, praise for the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attackers, plans to consolidate power in the executive branch and a desire to fire civil servants who are not sufficiently loyal to him.

“There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.” He added, “We should all remember: Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy.”

If Biden is waking up, that's probably a good thing compared to his minimizing the urgency of the threat until now.

News bits: Judge denies DJT's recusal demand; Radical right violence watch; Radical right corruption watch

DJT filed a motion to get D.C. federal judge Tanya Chutkan off his case in hopes of getting a friendlier judge. Chutkan rejected the recusal motion and is staying on his case. That's solidly good news.

It is amazing that DJT's attorneys keep making stuff up and submitting it to the court. Here's a couple of fiddly bits from Chutkan's 20 page memorandum and order:

I.     BACKGROUND

Before the court is Defendant’s Motion for Recusal of District Judge Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). ECF No. 50 (“Motion”). For the reasons set forth below, recusal is not warranted in this case and the court will DENY the Motion.

II.     LEGAL STANDARD 

A “judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). As Defendant has done here, a litigant may move for a judge’s recusal under that provision. See S.E.C. v. Loving Spirit Found. Inc., 392 F.3d 486, 493 (D.C. Cir. 2004). “[T]he moving party must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that a judge has conducted himself in a manner supporting disqualification.” United States v. Nixon, 267 F. Supp. 3d 140, 147 (D.D.C. 2017).

But justice also demands that judges not recuse without cause. “In the wrong hands, a disqualification motion is a procedural weapon to harass opponents and delay proceedings. If supported only by rumor, speculation, or innuendo, it is also a means to tarnish the reputation of a federal judge.” Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d at 108. Motions for recusal could also be wrongfully deployed as a form of “judge shopping,” Alberti v. Gen. Motors Corp., 600 F. Supp. 1024, 1025 (D.D.C. 1984), permitting “litigants or third parties to exercise a negative veto over the assignment of judges,” In re United States, 666 F.2d 690, 694 (1st Cir. 1981). There is, accordingly, as much “obligation upon a judge not to recuse himself when there is no occasion as there is for him to do so when there is.” United States v. Mitchell, 377 F. Supp. 1312, 1325 (D.D.C. 1974) (quotation omitted), aff’d sub nom. United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Ehrlichman v. U.S., 431 U.S. 933, 97 (1977), reh’g denied sub nom. Mitchell v. United States, 433 U.S. 916 (1977).

III.     DISCUSSION 

A. Source of statements 

The statements at issue here were based on intrajudicial sources.* They arose not, as the defense speculates, from watching the news, Reply in Supp. of Mot. for Recusal, ECF No. 58 at 4 (“Reply”), but from the sentencing proceedings in United States v. Palmer .... [see, crooked DJT lied about where the statements came from and his crooked attorneys lied too] The statements directly reflected facts proffered and arguments made by those defendants. And the court specifically identified the intrajudicial sources that informed its statements.

* The statements DJT refer to are from prosecution of two of the 1/6 traitors who participated in DJT's 1/6 coup attempt. In those cases Chutkan commented in court (not to the press or media) about the possible liability of people who had not yet been charged in the 1/6 insurrection. DJT argues that those statements prove by clear & convincing evidence that she is biased against Trump.

Even if the statements at issue lacked an intrajudicial foundation, however, they would not provide a reasonable basis to question the court’s impartiality from “the perspective of a fully informed third-party observer who understands all the relevant facts and has examined the record and the law.” Cordova, 806 F.3d at 1092 (internal quotation marks omitted). And the statements certainly do not manifest a deep-seated prejudice that would make fair judgment impossible—the standard for recusal based on statements with intrajudicial origins.

At the outset, it bears noting that the court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it: that former “President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned.” [again, crooked DJT is lying to the court]Motion at 1. And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar. Instead, the defense interprets the court’s verbal reiteration of Palmer and Priola’s arguments about their relative culpability as “suggest[ing]” a secret “core view” about Defendant’s criminality.

Even on their face, the court’s statements fall short of manifesting “clear and convincing evidence”** that the court has conducted itself “in a manner supporting disqualification.” 

** The three main evidence standards are (i) preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) used to find liability in civil lawsuits, (ii) clear and convincing evidence (more than a preponderance of evidence but less than beyond a reasonable doubt) used for proof of fraud and in some other situations like this one, and (iii) evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, needed for criminal guilt.

IV.     CONCLUSION 

For these reasons, Defendant’s Motion for Recusal of District Judge Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), ECF No. 50, is hereby DENIED. 

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The Huffpo writes about Milley: "Mark Milley Taking ‘Safety Precautions’ After Trump Suggested He Deserves Execution. After the ex-president accused him of treason, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said he 'will never turn my back on the Constitution.'"

Milley is acting to protect himself and his family to try to prevent some deranged, enraged MAGA maggot with a gun from killing him or is family. That's what authoritarian radical right Republican politics has degenerated into. DJT always was and still is a vicious, authoritarian radical right demagogue.

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A WaPo opinion comments about rich people cheating on their taxes and the ARRRP (authoritarian radical right Repub Party) staunchly supporting massive tax cheating:

Republicans have been amplifying the claim lately that their party has undergone a “populist” makeover, rendering it both anti-elite and pro-working class. One way Republicans purport to illustrate this is by attacking President Biden’s expanded funding for the Internal Revenue Service, insisting that it empowers a strike force of bureaucrats to prey on ordinary Americans.

But new data on tax avoidance by the ultrarich badly undermines GOP claims to being an anti-elite, pro-worker party. It shows that if Republicans get their way with regard to the IRS, a nontrivial number of very rich Americans would continue to underpay taxes they owe, effectively making out like bandits — some literally so.

.... the 2,000 people who represent the highest-income non-filers in one or more of those years owe a total of more than $900 million in federal taxes, the data shows.

“These are people who essentially blow raspberries at the IRS,” Wyden told me. “They’re sophisticated people. They know this is wrong, wrong, wrong. And they do it anyway.”

The data underscores that when the IRS is underfunded, wealthy tax cheats benefit in a big way. An underfunded IRS is what Republicans are advocating for.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed last year, included $80 billion in additional IRS funding. Biden sought it specifically to bring in more revenue by targeting wealthy tax cheats.

But House Republicans voted this year to repeal that funding. Many GOP presidential candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, have attacked it.  

Starving the IRS has been a longtime Republican project. Indeed, GOP efforts to cut agency funding had some success in creating precisely the state of affairs that Wyden’s data illustrates.

The ARRRP openly supports wealthy tax cheats because it hates government and non-rich people. The irony is that it claims to be anti-elite and pro-working class while it's actually pro-elite and anti-working class (and anti-environment, anti-climate science, anti-abortion, anti-inconvenient truth, bigoted, racist, kleptocratic, etc.). That's the staggering power of MAGA dark free speech for 'ya. 

Note, that most salaried and hourly people can't cheat much on their taxes. Taxes are withheld and for the most part that's that. But rich people? They have all kinds of ways to lie, cheat and steal. Wealthy cheaters is what the ARRRP staunchly supports, not the little people.

The 400 wealthiest U.S. families paid an average income tax rate of 8.2% from 2010 to 2018, while others looked like this: