appendix-rock (u/appendix-rock)

appendix-rock commented on Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users openrss.org/blog/using-cl... · Posted by u/campuscodi

afh1 · a year ago

Same, but for VPN (either corporate or personal). Reddit blocks it completely, requires you to sign-in but even the sign-in page is "network restricted"; LinkedIn shows you a captcha but gives an error when submitting the result (several reports online); and overall a lot of 403's. All go magically away when turning off the VPN. Companies, specially adtechs like Reddit and LinkedIn, do NOT want you to browse privately, to the point they rather you don't use their website at all unless without a condom.

appendix-rock · a year ago

I don’t follow the logic here. There seems to be an implication of ulterior motive but I’m not seeing what it is. What aspect of ‘privacy’ offered by a VPN do you think that Reddit / LinkedIn are incentivised to bypass? From a privacy POV, your VPN is doing nothing to them, because your IP address means very little to them from a tracking POV. This is just FUD perpetuated by VPN advertising.

However, the undeniable reality is that accessing the website with a non-residential IP is a very, very strong indicator of sinister behaviour. Anyone that’s been in a position to operate one of these services will tell you that. For every…let’s call them ‘privacy-conscious’ user, there are 10 (or more) nefarious actors that present largely the same way. It’s easy to forget this as a user.

I’m all but certain that if Reddit or LinkedIn could differentiate, they would. But they can’t. That’s kinda the whole point.

appendix-rock commented on Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/keithly

exitb · a year ago

If I decided to charge my customer specifically for indenting my code, I imagine they might be interesting in evidence that they're getting their money's worth.

appendix-rock · a year ago

No. They might trust your professional judgement, and not all professional judgement has roots in academic publications.

appendix-rock commented on Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/keithly

traceroute66 · a year ago

This sounds like very much a typical American thing, arse-covering because of the sue-me culture. Hence "I'll put in in writing I recommended an annual X-Ray to the patient".

Europe takes a clinical risk (e.g. caries risk) based approach combined with a patient age factor. To have annual X-Rays in Europe you would have to have some sort of dental issue that puts you in that high-risk category, and even then, the clinic would keep you under review and lengthen the periods as soon as it was clinically possible to do so.

This has always been the case, even before the latest scientific evidence on the potential harms of X-Rays.

appendix-rock · a year ago

Yep. Not that it’s necessarily happening here, but I always…sigh deeply, let’s say, when something that’s described by Americans as “an $x industry problem” is actually ‘an America problem, manifesting in the $x industry’.