You know you are getting old when:

[EngProf]

Google may know more about you than you think they do, if you have and carry an Android phone.

Has everyone seen that excellent anti-Google commercial for a different search engine where this very creepy-looking guy is right over your shoulder as you type?
The song/music for it is PERFECT":
"Every move you make,
every step you take,
I'll be watching you."

(Can't remember who did that song originally - a sign I'm getting old...)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or as the Duncan Sisters put it in 1929 --

"Wherever you go --
Whatever you do --
I want you to know
I'm following you!"

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Has everyone seen that excellent anti-Google commercial for a different search engine where this very creepy-looking guy is right over your shoulder as you type?
The song/music for it is PERFECT":
"Every move you make,
every step you take,
I'll be watching you."

(Can't remember who did that song originally - a sign I'm getting old...)

The Police, "Every Breath You Take"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

When someone well-known passes away you find yourself looking at pics of them when they were your age.

 

[tonyb]

… you call an old friend, a guy you worked with years and years ago and with whom you stay in touch every now and then, and get a recording that says the number is no longer in service. And then you consider who you might call who would know what became of this old mutual friend and you remember that those people are also no longer in service.

 

[Edward]

Has everyone seen that excellent anti-Google commercial for a different search engine where this very creepy-looking guy is right over your shoulder as you type?
The song/music for it is PERFECT":
"Every move you make,
every step you take,
I'll be watching you."

(Can't remember who did that song originally - a sign I'm getting old...)

The Police, "Every Breath You Take"

Yes, it was the Police - and as memory serves it was always intended to be about a stalker. Yet another song that the public misinterpreted as a "love song" which wasn't. I often wonder what's wrong with people that they think the creepiest things are "romantic"!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Icecream became more and more a curious thing to me.
There are times, I can tolerate it, without feeling anything. And there are times, my interieur just doesn't like it. Nothing between.
It doesn't seem to have anything to do with daytime. Maybe, the lunch has some influence, but I don't think, that much.

Anyone same experiences?

 

[So33]

Riding in the car with my 36 year old son in law. After getting off cell phone with my wife, who was on speaker through the car sound system. Mumbled how incompetent she is with her phone.
Got me thinking this morning?
Per internet, the first I-phone came out in 2007. There didn’t seem to be any reason to run out and buy one because the flip phone worked just fine? When her flip phone finely gave up and they said they don’t make them anymore we got the I-phone in about 2012. That would have put her about 54 years old.
She said this morning that her 3 yrs. old grandson had to show her how to take pictures and edit them.
Now my hopes are that when the son in law turns 54, something “mind boggling” gets invented that he doesn’t ever think is needed, that he doesn’t want to use, that he doesn’t want to pay for, he doesn’t want to learn it’s new tricks and always thought he did fine before it was ever around.
I hope I’m still around to mock him and laugh.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
It’s an unfortunate human tendency, especially among the young, not to recognize our indebtedness to others. Some never outgrow it.

 

[GHT]

When someone well-known passes away you find yourself looking at pics of them when they were your age.

You might find the obituary of Charlie Watts a fascinating read: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/24/charlie-watts-obituary

 

[Edward]

Has everyone seen that excellent anti-Google commercial for a different search engine where this very creepy-looking guy is right over your shoulder as you type?
The song/music for it is PERFECT":
"Every move you make,
every step you take,
I'll be watching you."

(Can't remember who did that song originally - a sign I'm getting old...)

Is that duckduckgo? Their marketing on the privacy basis is interesting. That's the search engine I use myself.

Of course, while many of us object to data collection, these things are all businesses. The reason Google gives what it does for free is because they make their money harvesting the data. (As the old line goes, on the internet if you're not paying for it, that is because you are the product.) If we still expect to get all our online services for free, then the money will come from somewhere else. I've not seen a breakdown of DDG's business model. I expect they must use a mix of ads and statistics - stats on searches and such being acceptable without consent under pretty much all data protection laws, providing that they are "anonymised".

Tricky thing, though, online anonymity: back in 2006, AoL celebrated a significant milestone by releasing masses of search data to promote the claimed utility and breadth of their engine. A particularly silly move, in retrospect: diligent journalists managed to make a significant point by databasing, profiling and eventually in a whole slew of instances putting a name to individuals by reverse engineering the raw search returns. The consensus view now is that genuine online anonymity is a virtual impossibility.

https://techcrunch.com/2006/08/09/first-person-identified-from-aol-data-thelma-arnold/

 

[GHT]

Is that duckduckgo?
Tricky thing, though, online anonymity: back in 2006, AoL celebrated a significant milestone by releasing masses of search data to promote the claimed utility and breadth of their engine. A particularly silly move, in retrospect: diligent journalists managed to make a significant point by databasing, profiling and eventually in a whole slew of instances putting a name to individuals by reverse engineering the raw search returns. The consensus view now is that genuine online anonymity is a virtual impossibility.
https://techcrunch.com/2006/08/09/first-person-identified-from-aol-data-thelma-arnold/

Personal data is bought and sold almost everywhere, not just online. You can be sure that the likes of the supermarkets with their loyalty cards have a profile on your spending, just as financial institutions have on your debit/credit card use.

Have you ever bought anything by way of a phone call? The information they want, post code, pinpoints where you live and immediately lets them know whether you live in a palace or a pit. They want your house number, they want your email address, your landline and cell phone numbers, and, and, and. It all gets recorded and the profile builds. They then fill in the gaps with profiles bought from elsewhere.

Has anyone come across a retail outlet that doesn't take cash? Cash you see, makes you invisible and we can't have that, can we? I have noticed it from local takeaways to five star hotels, how long before we are a cashless society? How long before we reach the Orwellian totalitarian Oceania?

You have to be old to grumble about privacy loss, baby boomers are probably the last generation to have lived before the invasion of privacy.

 

[BobHufford]

 

[Edward]

Personal data is bought and sold almost everywhere, not just online. You can be sure that the likes of the supermarkets with their loyalty cards have a profile on your spending, just as financial institutions have on your debit/credit card use.

Have you ever bought anything by way of a phone call? The information they want, post code, pinpoints where you live and immediately lets them know whether you live in a palace or a pit. They want your house number, they want your email address, your landline and cell phone numbers, and, and, and. It all gets recorded and the profile builds. They then fill in the gaps with profiles bought from elsewhere.

Has anyone come across a retail outlet that doesn't take cash? Cash you see, makes you invisible and we can't have that, can we? I have noticed it from local takeaways to five star hotels, how long before we are a cashless society? How long before we reach the Orwellian totalitarian Oceania?

You have to be old to grumble about privacy loss, baby boomers are probably the last generation to have lived before the invasion of privacy.

The whole of EU data protection law is predicated on the notion that sharing of personal data is an inevitability, and as such needs to have sensible rules. As ever, there are no new problems, though the internet has certainly made data harvesting and profiling very significantly easier than once it was. The move to collapse as many functions as possible into a single place of course also makes this easier - e.g. the mooted shift on London transport to bin the Oyster card and only take payment via contactless payment cards. Alternatively, you can already use a contactless card, or a payment app in your phone. It's the archetypal eggs / basket scenario.

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As Jello Biafra once put it, "Give me convenience or give me death." I did offer to buy the wife one of the Alexa things, but she didn't like the idea. I don't care for it myself, though a huge detraction for me, completely aside from the privacy question, is that I simply hate voice-activated tech, and would a thousand times rather wiggle through menus with a remote or type than speak to a machine.

 

[GHT]

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How right you are Mr Hufford. That hit my giggle button.

 

[Who?]

GrapheneOS for the win.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's startling to realize the modern era of "smart devices" is barely fifteen years old, and yet there are people who lived entire lives in a world without any such technology who have no sense anymore of what it was to live without it. Tech is like a vampire -- it can't come in unless you invite it.

 

[tonyb]

The lovely missus bought an Alexa a couple-three years ago. I hated it. She gave it to a friend.

 

[Who?]

The lovely missus bought an Alexa a couple-three years ago. I hated it. She gave it to a friend.

My daughter has one. I won’t have one in the house.

No “smart” anything, no Ring Doorbell either.

 

[tonyb]

The dewy-eyed bride wants not just a video doorbell but also cameras trained on all sides of the house. I had thought that rather extreme but I have gradually come over to her way of thinking. She is unusually vulnerable physically and advancing years have me getting that way. And it certainly isn’t that crime is unheard of around here.

If only I had more faith that such a security system would spare us. Perhaps its presence would have a would-be evildoer consider going elsewhere. And perhaps it wouldn’t. Unless the video would prove useful in solving a major crime, it’s doubtful the local constabulary would do much with it anyway. And it’s hard to fault them for that, what with stretched resources and all. Even the good videos show only so much.