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Cake day: March 9th, 2024

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  • Syn_Attck@lemmy.todaytoScience Memes@mander.xyzElsevier
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    9 months ago

    Unless you know specifically what they’re adding or changing this wouldn’t work. If they have a hidden ‘barcode’ and you add another hidden ‘barcode’ or modify the image in a way to remove some or all of theirs, they’d still be able to read theirs.



  • Syn_Attck@lemmy.todaytoScience Memes@mander.xyzElsevier
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    9 months ago

    This is a great point. Image watermarking steganography is nearly impossible to defeat unless you can obtain multiple copies of the ‘same’ file from multiple users to look for differences. It could be a change of a single 5-15 pixels from one rgb code off.

    rgb(255, 251, 0)

    to

    rgb(255, 252, 0)

    Which would be imperceptable to the human eye. Depending on the number of users it may need to change more or less pixels.

    There is a ton of work in this field and its very interesting, for anyone considering majoring in computer science / information security.

    Another ‘neat’ technology everyone should know about is machine identification codes, or, the tiny secret tracking dots that color printers print on every page to identify the specific make, model, and serial number (I think?) of the printer the page was printed from. I don’t believe B&W printers have tracking dots, which were originally used to track creators of counterfeit currency. EFF has a page of color printers which do not include tracking dots on printed pages. This includes color LaserJets along with InkJets, although I would not be surprised if there was a similar tracking feature in place now or in the future “for safety and privacy reasons,” but none that I am aware of.





  • Syn_Attck@lemmy.todaytoScience Memes@mander.xyzElsevier
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    9 months ago

    Unfortunately that wouldn’t work as this is information inside the PDF itself so it has nothing to do with the file hash (although that is one way to track.)

    Now that this is known, It’s not enough to remove metadata from the PDF itself. Each image inside a PDF, for example, can contain metadata. I say this because they’re apparently starting a game of whack-a-mole because this won’t stop here.

    There are multiple ways of removing ALL metadata from a PDF, here are most of them.

    It will be slow-ish and probably make the file larger, but if you’re sharing a PDF that only you are supposed to have access to, it’s worth it. MAT or exiftool should work.

    Edit: as spoken about in another comment thread here, there is also pdf/image steganography as a technique they can use.



  • Funny, we get more complaints about DuckDuckGo browser than anything else, and that’s one of the few we don’t test on. I know this because I make it a point to have someone from CS tell me about consistent pain points users are having. I wonder how many complaints about Firefox not working your customer service team is getting daily and you just don’t hear about it because they’ve been told to tell users “just say Firefox isn’t a supported browser and to try installing Chrome.”

    You should ask someone in CS. Whichever agent bullshits the least (not the manager) - you might learn something.

    Almost 3/10 people accessing your sites are using Firefox. All those “images not loading right or whatever” are probably blatant to them, making them think “wow, what an absolute shit website.”

    3 out of 10.





  • At that point its out of your hands. Once the users have fully decided only one browser is all they’re going to use, because most websites only develop for that browser (gee sound familiar?) then whoever owns that browser owns the web. That’s the point people are trying to get you to understand and you aren’t getting.

    its not like we wont notice a shift like that. It would be very easy to adapt

    This has has happened before. It took over a decade to get people to start using other browsers. Your little company can’t wave a magic wand and make the entire internet ecosystem shift, even though you were part of the cause.

    Firefox market share is going up. But because small vendors not testing on it, it’s preventing its adoption. So you’re letting Google own the web.



  • I think it’s not humiliating, but if you know someone, you should have some idea what they like/their interests are. Getting a small gift that fits them shows that you spent at least a small amount of time and thoughtfulness picking out or making the gift. If you don’t know the person, sure, cash/gift card.

    Although I think it’s becoming less common to have the space or ‘the time’ (but we could prob all spend 30 mins less each day doing nothing on our phones) so giving physical actual gifts are becoming less common, and also due to the economy the idea of ‘mandatory days of gift giving’ is a bit off-putting. People love getting personalized gifts from people who create things, but far less people today ‘have time’ to learn a hobby where they create things in physical space.

    Less “Fuck you here is $10” and more “Here is $10 as agreed upon by the social contract unwritten by the masses who came before us, I didn’t have any clue what you might like or want and didn’t think to ask.”

    Some people gladly prefer cash/card. I am one of those people. We will make that known well ahead of time.