Sorry, you specifically mentioned "these dumps". I don't know about "those" dumps. Mattermost and Element can import everything from Slack, but it might require following their instructions.
Sometimes it feels like the internet is still the wild west.
The EU tries to rope off a single building with velvet ropes, a doorman, ID verification, facial scans, and cookie banners, while next door it's an illegal rave in an abandoned supermarket.
I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation. What websites should do is that they should assume you reject any tracking as their default, and then they can offer a site setting that you have to seek out, where you can agree to be tracked. What they are sort of allowed to do, is that they can prompt you with a banner, but it has to be a single no-click without requiring you to read much, but that is still not compliance. Anything more annoying is a legal violation.
The real issue is that there aren't a whole lot of consequences when it comes to tracking data. It's a legal violation, sure, but it's not a criminal violation. So it would be up to you to pursue it. In many countries you can't even file a civil lawsuit, but rather, you have to go through your national data protection agency. Which in reality likely means your complaint will be auto-rejected after five years because they need to clean up the queue.
As far as the malicious disobedience goes... well... it's probably because "all the other website do it", but you might as well just give people the option to go to a setting to turn it off. It's not like that would be any less of a legal violation than the banner.
Sort of aside but it’s wild to me that people talk of ab testing all kinds of minor things and yet so many shops immediately cover up the item I’m viewing with a huge banner/full page annoyance about cookies.
The other day I accidentally double-clicked on the the dismiss of a popup and the second click went through to the page underneath and I added an item to cart.
Don't know if it was intentionally positioned like that but I was ready to imagine it was.
You're right and I'm torn on whether it's good or bad. In a way that would be at least sensible, but awful for me. The other option is they're making lazy bad choices.
I do wonder what would have happened if the laws were in place first. Would people have been so willing to add all this stuff if it meant putting a big thing over the entire shop?
My other consideration is whether if the owners had to use their site like new customers every time if they'd get pissed off about the stuff covering their actual shops.
Given people A/B test all kinds of minor things I'm sure someone would have hit on it and then it would spread. That's basically the rocket fuel that drives people really into A/B testing everything rather than just hunches "I could find something which increases metrics you wouldn't otherwise think to try".
In either case, I think the net result is bad news for users, good news for people selling things. And of course the sprinkle of "people just making mistakes/guesses" too, but there's no universe that's not going to be found.
> I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation.
The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].
It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.
I don't seem to get them from outside the EU (even with my adblocker disabled), so a law saying they need an annoying banners I agree to before they go for it might actually be a step up.
You are not wrong, but the fact that they never follow up and allow the practice makes them complicit. Same for the farcical malicious (non-)compliance of the GFPR through 'legitimate intetest' abuse.
They didn't want user data to be sent to third-parties without consent, so they created a law that made it mandatory for web pages to ask for consent to send the data. Most web pages need to send data to third-parties to be profitable, so they need to ask for consent.
What would the next steps be like? The purpose of the law is to give users the power to consent or not consent. In other words, I can pay for the contents of a web page with my data. Removing that option from me doesn't give me power to do whatever I want with my data: it takes that power away from me instead. That would be bad.
That rubric only applies when the users aren’t actively and maliciously sabotaging the system, which privacy-subverting websites absolutely are. (And everyone else is cargo-cutting their behavior.)
Defending yourself from abuse is not an excuse for others to engage in abuse. I have no issue with passive 90's-style ads. I don't need to block them. I use my abuse-blocker to handle more concerning problems.
Note that the most annoying consent banners come from advertising conglomerates (IAB comes to mind). Well who would think they wouldn’t sabotage anything?
I agree with your sentiment, but it would really be a great step to stop calling these things "cookie banners" and use "consent banners" or "tracking banners". Call them what they are.
Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.
It always felt both "a cheap shot" and "valid" to express dismay that characters in video games don't react when you do things like jump up and down on their table.
While it's impossible for game developers to write code to cover every situation, AI could make general reactions possible.
It's surprising that really simple things like this haven't been tried yet (AFAIK!). Like, even if it's just the dialogue, it can still go a long way.
The cost benefit is really poor, but I also wonder if it's just never been done well.
Old text adventures honestly did this heaps better than modern games do, but the reality is there was a more finite action space for them and it wasn't surprising when something wasn't catered for.
Which games are these? I’d be interested in checking them out.
I’m only aware of experimentation in making more “difficult” NPC AI which was found less enjoyable for obvious reasons, so would be interested to see why similar but different attempts down another path also failed.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is one of the closer attempts, NPCs will react to lots of things about you and behavior, like if you smell bad or stare at them for too long
I was so surprised in BotW and TotK to see NPCs duck, huddle, gasp and otherwise react to odd shit you might be doing. Also in dialogue, do contextual things like talk about the weather and time.
I would love to see a Zelda game implement LLM dialogue for random inconsequential dialogue or relating dialogue to the game context.
