y'all just ever accidentally spell a long word correctly first try and then have to double-check by looking it up in a dictionary to make sure nothing went wrong?

because I do be like that

@lyxal average native english speaker

Perhaps

Wow it's definitely Ukraine doing the genocide and war crimes in this conflict /s: cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-17-22/…

@AidenChow Imagine a person named Bob. Bob wants to run Funky code but the only way to do so is to send the program to a central processing factory via mail. Bob writes his program onto a piece of paper and sends it to the address of the Funky factory. The Funky factory gets Bob's code and executes it and generates results.

However, the workers at the Funky factory have no clue where to send the results to because all the incoming mail doesn't have a return address. Instead, they require people sending in code to also send a unique code that they give out to users who register at the Funky factory

So Bob goes and registers at the Funky factory. They ask for his address and in return give him a unique code that correlates to his name and address

Now, when Bob sends code to the Funky factory, he includes the program and his unique code that is linked to his address

The Funky factory processes the code and now, using the unique identifier, knows where to send the results to, and Bob gets his output

That's basically how the session cookie works in this instance if I've understood what ATaco is saying correctly

The only information the session cookie has is a string of random characters (such as iwOkJWK82nkiwnwKWNO) which it associates with your computer (most likely your IP)

well what if bob just put his home address as the return address instead of having to get a number from the factory, seems a lot simpler. maybe the website sends interpreter code along with ip address or smth like that and the interpreter sends the output back to the website through that ip address

no need for cookie at all

You and your brother have the same ip

Metaphorically, I don’t actually know your sibling status

@AidenChow what if Bob shares a room with Alice? If Bob just includes his return address, he might get results from programs Alice sent to the factory

Because there'd be no way of telling who's results are for who

Bob can only tell if a given result is for him if he sends something specific to him that can't be shared

Addresses can be shared/occupied by multiple people, unique codes can't.

there must be smth thats unique across different devices that can be used, i didnt mean specifically ip address

and not a unique code

idk, it just seems uneccesary to me

I think I’d prefer a unique code than anything unique to the device

That’s called fingerprinting, and it’s used very maliciously

Why go to all the trouble of finding something unique to each and every device in the world when unique codes can easily be generated

You can say no to my cookie, you can’t say no to fingerprinting

That's right. With a unique code, the information associated with it is all that's associated with it. And theoretically, that unique code is unique to the site that generated it (of course there's ways of tracking cookies across sites but for the sake of this example we'll go simple). Device specifics aren't unique to a single website - all websites get the same identifier meaning you can be targeted across multiple sites

With device specific information, what I do on one site can impact what happens on another without me being able to do anything about it

With cookies, I can just disable them completely and not have my activity on one site impact my experience on another

okok i get it now lol. does this mean that all cookies are safe to use, or can they still be used maliciously

Anything can be used maliciously

Cookies just give you the option to opt out

Device specific information doesn't

That's the key take away

how do uk if a cookie is safe to use before opting in

It depends on what the website says they'll use it for and how trustworthy they are

It's really up to what you feel comfortable sharing and how many features/convinces you want

btw SE uses cookies

"convinces" ?

i thought that was a verb lol

Conveniences

I'm on mobile I don't have spell check lol

And autocomplete doesn't always give the right word you're looking for

@lyxal oh wait really, i dont remember a consent thingy, but maybe it did show up

is se trustworthy with cookies, i heard smth about se doing fingerprinting with audio i think

stackoverflow.com/legal/cookie-policy

The two screenshots show the cookie dialogue

The link is the SE cookie policy

I usually only allow strictly necessary for all sites

how do i change that

idk if i have strictly necessary or smth else

There's a little link at the bottom of each SE page called cookie settings

oh i found them

:| i have targeting cookies on, is that bad

they taking my info for advertisement or what

It's not a matter of good or bad, it's a matter of how comfortable you feel with info being used for more targeted advertising

If you really want only good cookies, I recommend you get the duckduckgo browser extension and use the duckduckgo mobile app

ok that feels a bit creepy ngl, not sure why anyone would want to turn that on

It automatically blocks trackers

(@ROs move this conversation to another room?)

← 62 messages moved from The Nineteenth Byte

> Why is a "machine gun" defined under Title 26 - Internal Revenue Code, when every single other type of firearm seems to be defined under Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure? It's not as if Title 26 is redefining a machine gun for the purpose of tax law; Title 18 actually states something along the lines of "Machine gun, as defined in Title 26 / Section etc etc".

i just got a new keyboard and it is very satisfying to type with

nice

i am of the strong opinion that a keyboard should actually have some real "clickyness" to it when you type

having some solid travel to the keys also helps

oh definitely

now to fiddle with the macro/lighting software until i can find all the "dont collect my data" buttons in the settings

:)

oh god the software minimizes to the taskbar

lol