Why the right to opt-out, instead of requiring sale of data to be opt-in?
I’m not sure how this stuff happens on the backend, but if I sign up for something and there is an opt-out page buried somewhere, I assume they’ve already sold my data by the time I can get to the opt-out page. I still make a best effort, but once it’s sold, it’s really too late. There needs to be an option to never sell it in the first place.
Google Sheets is slower/has enough usability issues it's not an option and OpenOffice is missing a few features too, not to mention neither really can do VBA at all, nor do they have PowerQuery. So Excel it is.
Is this stuff… like, good? I don’t know anything about the MS ecosystem. If you could start from scratch, would using something more like Python, pandas, that sort of stuff, be viable?
You're not going to get non technical coworkers like the finance department entering their data or reports in pandas. So it depends on how much labor you want to put in helping them do it, I guess?
"It was Bernie Greenberg, who discovered that it was [2]. He wrote a version of Emacs in Multics MacLisp, and he wrote his commands in MacLisp in a straightforward fashion. The editor itself was written entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success—programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program."
No, none of it is good, excel is basically a bad tool for almost any job. There almost always exist a better thing for everything people use excel for.
But excel has inertia, and it's the only programming non-programmers are able, or rather willing, to do. So we're basically stuck with it.
And yes, I consider crafting and maintaining excel workbooks programming, even if no VBA is involved.
This annoys me with Apple devices, iCloud and all it's related backups of..well everything are on by default and it doesn't ask at any point in the setup of the device.
You have to then go into settings -> icloud and disable the main one and then like 30 individual ones.
There should be a big toggle at the top that says "Disable All Cloud Backups" they can feel free to throw in a warning.
This is just... not true? I'm curious what you mean, because iCloud cannot be on by default since it requires you to set up an iCloud account. You're asked to sign into iCloud during device setup, which you can decline.
Do you mean that, after consenting to and signing into iCloud, all of iCloud's feature are enabled by default?
I don't disagree. But defaults are important, and you are in a tiny minority with wanting to disable iCloud. 90% of people using Apple phones want or expect things to be magically backed up for them
Not saying they shouldn't have that, Apple feels it necessary to ask if I want Siri, if I want a Dark theme and if I want to give them payment details during device setup, I feel like "Do you also want us to back all your data up to a remote computer" could be on that list.
The phone backup is one toggle. The 30 individual ones are for syncing data for apps.
If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you? Without any cloud sync, I’m not sure what the value is, just sign out.
I’m sure you’d lose the ability to download apps, but most of those are also using iCloud to sync data.
For what it’s worth, Apple seems fairly decent about not opting users in to new stuff. When they released Messages syncing via iCloud, I had to explicitly turn it on for my various devices. The same was true for several other things.
> If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you?
Nope, You have to have an apple account tied to a physical phone number or you can't sign in on the device or use it at all and they opt you in to the 5GB free plan and yes, the 30 sliders is apps but that doesn't alter the fact that I want to be asked before they exfiltrate my data, technology should exist to serve the user and part of that (at least in my opinion) is respecting privacy.
Yes you can sign out and you can untoggle the boxes but that is rather my point, it's opt out not opt in.
I don't want default exfiltration of data from my devices to a faceless American corporation without that been my choice.
I daily my work MacBook without an Apple account or phone number. And no, it’s not in ABM, or any other MDE. App Store is unavailable because of the missing account, but it does not prevent me from using the device like you’re claiming.
An iPhone with no apps is pretty hard to use. A mac doesn't need the app store, but when I last set one up, I needed to install the devtools from the appstore to bootstrap macports or whatever, so that pushed me into an account.
This wasn't even a debate two years ago. People were still complaining about Secure Boot and needing Microsoft's permission to install Linux, and about locked phone bootloaders. The fact that this "need" has been manufactured was the victory. Michigan holding back for a moment doesn't matter when they already took California, and Europe is actively hostile to privacy - advocating for it there is starting to verge on the criminal.
Now the claw is closing, and government and big tech are combining. We're either going to let this tiny inbred elite track, monitor and rule every portion of our lives, or we're not. There are no solutions through government, and there are no technical solutions.
Right now you should be buying more computers than you need and datahoarding.
It is disrespectful that they can pretend with a straight face that they've suddenly discovered privacy concerns. The people who pay them started by priming them with the best arguments and lines that their "media" guys could come up with to dismiss those concerns and to paint the people bringing them up as Chinese terrorist pedophiles. They probably just figured out that they need to wait after the midterms, eliminate a few people and get a few others in, then they could get it passed attached to something else. While they're consciously planning, we're simply reacting and ascribing to ignorance and incompetence what is far better explained by malice.
The entire purpose of these laws is to destroy privacy. It isn't churches and puritans lobbying for them. There's no visible constituency lobbying for this, just a bunch of people who have been softened into going "well, if it helps..."
People need to ask themselves who's getting this stuff done? There are so many things that 70-80% of the electorate are loudly clamoring for that can't even get acknowledged by anyone in power or in the mainstream media, but this stuff gets passed?
> Bill sponsors Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, and Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, are now working with advocacy groups on potential replacement legislation, according to the MFEI.
It's an international coordinated effort to undermine every single citizen's privacy, an agenda being pushed for years, again and again in every country and state, by a coalition including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., corporations that profit greatly from mandatory identity verification online. It's only a matter of time until they buy out enough politicians to push it through and force future generations to live under their panopticon. Same with digitization of money.
It has reached the level of moral panic, so it’s the current topic everywhere.
Even on Hacker News, threads about children and social media or short form video will draw a lot of comments supporting harsh age restrictions, including an alarming number of extremist comments in favor banning under-18s from using the internet or phones.
It’s not until the discussion turns to implantation details that the sentiment swings firm negative. The average comment in favor of age restrictions hasn’t thought through what it would mean, they only assume that some mechanism will exist that only impacts children and/or sites they don’t care about.
As soon as the implantation details come out and everyone realizes that you can’t restrict children without first verifying everyone’s age or that “social media” includes Discord and other services they use, the outrage starts.
We’re now entering the phases where everyone realizes that these calls to action have consequences for everyone because there is no easy solution that automatically only impacts children.
Facebook is theorized to be paying an advocacy group to launch these, so that they can externalize the legal problems of social networking onto age verification and piecemeal state laws; simultaneously lowering their damages costs in future lawsuits and also raising the drawbridge over the newly-difficult compliance moat against future competitors.
People connect to the internet and do bad things (or have bad things happen to them)
They need to pay a service provider to have the capability to do bad things (or be exposed to bad things)
Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify these people (or block the bad things).
For any politician the line of thinking will be something like that. It comes off as incredibly long hanging fruit that would have broad positive impact for the whole of society. Like the apple in the garden of eden, just walk over, take a bite, and you'll be a political hero without having to do much work at all.
I think part of it is because many affluent parents have children with major mental health issues: anxiety, depression, bipolar, thoughts of self-harm, etc. and many of these parents blame social media. The affluent have way more sway over policymaking, and since social media seems easier to control that other vices, they're exerting their control.
Another example: in the California Assembly hearings for AB 1043 (their age verification bill), one mom offered testimony in support by saying it was social media that enticed her daughter into developing anorexia.
"We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time. For any issues, e-mail us at info@franklinnews.org or call us at (847) 497-5230."
This is extremely funny given it's an article about privacy concerns :)
If it's illegal in the United States to ask someone's age before distributing porn to them online because of the first amendment, why can physical porn stores ask for id? Is that also unconstitutional?
132 comments
> The right to opt out of its sale, and
Why the right to opt-out, instead of requiring sale of data to be opt-in?
I’m not sure how this stuff happens on the backend, but if I sign up for something and there is an opt-out page buried somewhere, I assume they’ve already sold my data by the time I can get to the opt-out page. I still make a best effort, but once it’s sold, it’s really too late. There needs to be an option to never sell it in the first place.
It's so annoying. No means no, not "pester me later"!
"It was Bernie Greenberg, who discovered that it was [2]. He wrote a version of Emacs in Multics MacLisp, and he wrote his commands in MacLisp in a straightforward fashion. The editor itself was written entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success—programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program."
But excel has inertia, and it's the only programming non-programmers are able, or rather willing, to do. So we're basically stuck with it.
And yes, I consider crafting and maintaining excel workbooks programming, even if no VBA is involved.
If we were starting from nothing it wouldn't be built, but the value of what already exists is massive.
You have to then go into settings -> icloud and disable the main one and then like 30 individual ones.
There should be a big toggle at the top that says "Disable All Cloud Backups" they can feel free to throw in a warning.
Do you mean that, after consenting to and signing into iCloud, all of iCloud's feature are enabled by default?
If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you? Without any cloud sync, I’m not sure what the value is, just sign out.
I’m sure you’d lose the ability to download apps, but most of those are also using iCloud to sync data.
For what it’s worth, Apple seems fairly decent about not opting users in to new stuff. When they released Messages syncing via iCloud, I had to explicitly turn it on for my various devices. The same was true for several other things.
> If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you?
Nope, You have to have an apple account tied to a physical phone number or you can't sign in on the device or use it at all and they opt you in to the 5GB free plan and yes, the 30 sliders is apps but that doesn't alter the fact that I want to be asked before they exfiltrate my data, technology should exist to serve the user and part of that (at least in my opinion) is respecting privacy.
Yes you can sign out and you can untoggle the boxes but that is rather my point, it's opt out not opt in.
I don't want default exfiltration of data from my devices to a faceless American corporation without that been my choice.
Now the claw is closing, and government and big tech are combining. We're either going to let this tiny inbred elite track, monitor and rule every portion of our lives, or we're not. There are no solutions through government, and there are no technical solutions.
Right now you should be buying more computers than you need and datahoarding.
It is disrespectful that they can pretend with a straight face that they've suddenly discovered privacy concerns. The people who pay them started by priming them with the best arguments and lines that their "media" guys could come up with to dismiss those concerns and to paint the people bringing them up as Chinese terrorist pedophiles. They probably just figured out that they need to wait after the midterms, eliminate a few people and get a few others in, then they could get it passed attached to something else. While they're consciously planning, we're simply reacting and ascribing to ignorance and incompetence what is far better explained by malice.
The entire purpose of these laws is to destroy privacy. It isn't churches and puritans lobbying for them. There's no visible constituency lobbying for this, just a bunch of people who have been softened into going "well, if it helps..."
People need to ask themselves who's getting this stuff done? There are so many things that 70-80% of the electorate are loudly clamoring for that can't even get acknowledged by anyone in power or in the mainstream media, but this stuff gets passed?
> Bill sponsors Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, and Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, are now working with advocacy groups on potential replacement legislation, according to the MFEI.
https://archive.is/hI3wJ
Even on Hacker News, threads about children and social media or short form video will draw a lot of comments supporting harsh age restrictions, including an alarming number of extremist comments in favor banning under-18s from using the internet or phones.
It’s not until the discussion turns to implantation details that the sentiment swings firm negative. The average comment in favor of age restrictions hasn’t thought through what it would mean, they only assume that some mechanism will exist that only impacts children and/or sites they don’t care about.
As soon as the implantation details come out and everyone realizes that you can’t restrict children without first verifying everyone’s age or that “social media” includes Discord and other services they use, the outrage starts.
We’re now entering the phases where everyone realizes that these calls to action have consequences for everyone because there is no easy solution that automatically only impacts children.
They need to pay a service provider to have the capability to do bad things (or be exposed to bad things)
Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify these people (or block the bad things).
For any politician the line of thinking will be something like that. It comes off as incredibly long hanging fruit that would have broad positive impact for the whole of society. Like the apple in the garden of eden, just walk over, take a bite, and you'll be a political hero without having to do much work at all.
The suicide rate in Palo Alto, for instance, was so high that the CDC investigated it (around 2016). The situation hasn't improved much since then. https://elestoque.org/2025/12/07/opinion/community-members-t...
Another example: in the California Assembly hearings for AB 1043 (their age verification bill), one mom offered testimony in support by saying it was social media that enticed her daughter into developing anorexia.
"We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time. For any issues, e-mail us at info@franklinnews.org or call us at (847) 497-5230."
This is extremely funny given it's an article about privacy concerns :)