Category: Generic

Bring an extra finger, she said.

Well pain me green and call me a pickle, this is one of the funniest shit I’ve seen with tech (apart from the 500 mile email): my laptop sometimes “forgets” that 1 finger mode (to simply move the cursor) exists, and I need an extra finger for everything: 2 fingers to move the cursor, 3 fingers to scroll, 4 fingers to middle click, etc.

Well, as it turns out, it’s an issue with my filthy greasy fingers (I have a lot of coconut oil on them lately, as i’m trying to rehydrate my skin after 10 days in the 23% humidity aridity of Budapest): 1 greasy finger does not conduct enough, so Wayland does not register it as “touch”. 2 fingers however are OK — for 1 finger’s worth of “touch”. 3 fingers conduct enough for 2 fingers, and so on. Suspend an unsuspend solves the issue by the way (so does apparently anything else that resets the touchpad subsystem/driver of Wayland, like switching out to / back from a tty), so there’s a bug-like element to this, but still, how funny is this. (And yes, I’m thinking if I clean my touchpad it’ll resolve the issue for a long time.)

I’m having some new year’s day fun with my NC Deck process.

As part of using Nextcloud as our family unCloud, I’m using Deck as as personal Kanban-adjacent system. It stretches in 2 main areas (on 2 different boards): apartment related things (shared across the family and including everything from small maintenance through getting stuff from Praxis/Gamma (hardware store chains in NL) to larger (and expensive) projects like the long overdue replacement of our air filtering/circulation system; and personal stuff, for tracking things I need to plan around my life, be it something in the home IT stack, or my bike(s), or planning a holiday.

Each of these have their small benefits. Continue reading I’m having some new year’s day fun with my NC Deck process.

Reactivate for deactivate.

Meta is “getting ready to expand [their] AI at Meta experiences to [my] region.” Now…

  • I have an instagram account deactivated since ~2018 (can’t even remember, but I’ll asterisk this anyway.)
  • Meta sent me an email informing me that soon, they will use my instagram data to train their ai.
  • I don’t want this. (Not that it matters much. It’s just called that anyway.)
  • They also inform me I have a “right to object”, as they use the data for training by technically extending their definition of Legitimate Interest. Which, first off, is a shady practice on its own right, ans second, yay, EU! I guess US users are… screwed?
  • To use the right to object link, however, I need to log in to Instagram, and reactivate my account first.
  • But whilst trying this, I actually also discovered (I guess I knew this when I deactivated, but forgot) that my inactive account only extends to my username, and not the actual account, which is still accessible in it’s frozen state from whenever. (Well technically it’s inactive, right?) But anyway, why not delete the whole thing, while I’m at it, thought I.
  • But to just simply log in, I need to provide my date of birth, no login without that.

So as simple a thing as opting out of ai data collection, I face 2 dilemmas:

  1. Do I reactivate myself just to opt out of ai?
  2. Do I provide my date of birth just to reactivate myself just to opt out of ai?

(The answer is “yes, but use fake data, and then delete the whole thing.” I guess.)

As a footnote, behold the passive agressive legalese Meta could come up with explaining the legal basis for ai training:

To help bring these experiences to you, we’ll now rely on the legal basis called legitimate interests for using your information to develop and improve AI at Meta. This means that you have the right to object to how your information is used for these purposes. If your objection is honoured, it will be applied from then on.