Mention of Richard Carrier was odd. The mythicist angle of Gospel accounts seems the least worthy of mention, even when the author encourages taking his work with the proverbial sodium. I like watching Tim O'Neill angrily refute everything Carrier says - he really doesn't like the guy.
Unity 7 HUD could search the menubar of any application. I was quite good at guessing the name of the function I wanted, far better than I was at finding it in menus. It looks like MATE, XFCE and i3 still have this.
cardholders Mastercard thinks will be “high-value”—predictions used to target certain people and encourage them to spend more money.
Sorry, I don't understand, perhaps because I am in the UK not US. My bank issues my Mastercard, so I don't have a direct relationship with them. How would they target me?
You are using Mastercard's payment network whenever you pay for something. They see and record all your transactions. Mastercard is the entity informing your bank to pay the merchant's bank.
Yes, but how is Mastercard encouraging me to spend more? In my day to day, it matters little which payment network I use since that’s abstracted away by the bank’s interface.
What opportunity does Mastercard have to target me?
They sell your transaction data to Google. When merchants provide Level 3 information (line items), Google can now know exactly what you're actually spending your money on.
Then, Google can show you super-relevant ads, that might encourage you to spend even more.
Presumably they could tell stores that you have your card on file with? (Only speculating; I have no idea if they or any other card network actually does that.)
Offering lower interests rates as a promo, higher limits, low interest loans, bonus points from certain brands/categories, offering new types of cards, etc etc
Read OP’s comment again. Mastercard is not a card issuer, they can offer none of the things you mentioned.
The answer to OP’s question, of course, is that Mastercard doesn’t make use of the information it has directly. It sells the information to interested parties like Google and other advertisers. This is the behavior EFF is objecting to.
My worry is that that merchants offer higher prices based on their assessment of my private data.
We've had the situation before when booking holidays that my wife sees higher prices for the same hotel on her laptop while sitting right next to me. Once she cleared cookies the price went down to match what I've been offered on a clean computer.
That was a few years ago so I would imagine IDing potential customers is done via browser finger printing now rather than cookies and so harder to protect against.
Really, who wants their bank or payment network to collude in higher prices?
Same here, been using two Fossil Hybrid smartwatches ever since my Pebble stopped working.
I'm sold on simple smartwatches that only require an e-ink (or whatever it is) screen because they hold a charge for well over a month and still do everything I need from them. Namely show notifications, who's calling, who's messaging, read messages, control music, and some other stuff that is less important.
The app has also improved over the years, even though I'm still pretty sure they sell all my personal data to any bidder. Of course I'd prefer a more self hosted or open approach.
But it's good enough. Currently I'm using a Machine, don't remember the name of the one before it but it was similar, slightly smaller.
The main alarmist assertion has been rebutted by @Botanygeek on twitter. I tend to turn to him whenever a newspaper reports on any environmental story, the same way we have to show scepticism every time a newspaper reports on any "x cures y" story.
