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kul_ commented on Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting   engineering.tamu.edu/news... · Posted by u/gnabgib
gruez · 8 months ago
It still works because those CGNAT shared IPs still vaguely correspond to a certain geography. It won't be accurate enough to target a specific home, but still accurate enough to target a specific neighborhood, for instance.
kul_ · 8 months ago
Assuming an ext-IP (60k ports) can easily represent 100 household if we statically assign ports. Given CGNAT with dynamic port allocation this can easily go up to 5x? That's wildly inaccurate given the core problem is to "target" a small set of users which is based on this geo info. Not sure how well this elephant sits in a room full of engineers solving this specific targeting problem.
kul_ commented on Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting   engineering.tamu.edu/news... · Posted by u/gnabgib
djrj477dhsnv · 8 months ago
> ISPs normally will have at least one level of NATing with ipv4.

I don't think that's generally true for home DSL/cable/fiber service. I've only seen it on mobile internet.

kul_ · 8 months ago
Not sure about US, but Indian ISPs are doing this already to conserve IP space given huge userbase. In theory it would work similar to how a NAT gateway works for outbound communication. Skan + geo would be hard nut to crack in India.
kul_ commented on Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting   engineering.tamu.edu/news... · Posted by u/gnabgib
legitster · 8 months ago
As someone who works in this tech space, nobody brings up how long fingerprints persist. And the reality is that even a really precise fingerprint has a half-life of only a few days (especially if it's based on characteristics like window size or software versions).

A lot of the big ad networks right now instead rely heavily on geo-data. Which is why you are probably seeing lots of ads in your feeds that seemingly cross between devices or are relating to interests of your spouse/friends/etc. They just look at the geo on your IP and literally flood the zone.

> They developed a measurement framework called FPTrace, which assesses fingerprinting-based user tracking by analyzing how ad systems respond to changes in browser fingerprints.

I'm curious to know a bit more about their methodology. It's more likely to me that the ad networks are probably segmenting the ads based on device settings more than they are individually targeting based on fingerprints. For example, someone running new software versions on new hardware might be lumped into a hotter buyer category. Also, simple things like time of day have huge impacts on ad bidding, so knowing how they controlled would be everything.

kul_ · 8 months ago
> A lot of the big ad networks right now instead rely heavily on geo-data

How does this work in today's age where ISPs normally will have at least one level of NATing with ipv4. And given ipv6 with prefix delegation is still far away this should continue to be very imprecise?

kul_ commented on Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineers   github.com/WerWolv/ImHex... · Posted by u/wsc981
kul_ · 2 years ago
Reminds of the old days, when reverse engineering game binaries were a thing. Finding hex strings, no-op'ing if conditions, adding jmp instructions. Many heroes forgotten with time as more and more of software onboarded the cloud offerings. I wonder how much of it is still relevant and in what fields?
kul_ commented on Ask HN: How are account balances updated in a real bank?    · Posted by u/kul_
b20000 · 2 years ago
it all just lives in a bunch of csv files on a few people’s PCs and every night a 62 year old man copy pastes it together and checks everything and then uploads it to some old mainframe. he is the only one who knows how to do that job.
kul_ · 2 years ago
I cannot tell if this is a serious comment.
kul_ commented on Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?   biology.stackexchange.com... · Posted by u/ent101
kul_ · 2 years ago
I misread this for some reason and I am now interested to know if DNS can be made to work dynamically this way instead of being just preconfigured static records?
kul_ commented on PostgreSQL Lock Conflicts   pglocks.org/... · Posted by u/boiler_up800
kul_ · 2 years ago
This is excellent, kudos to the author. I wonder if pg exposes enough control to develop a tool along with this information which help analyze locks and their effect on queries on a live server.
kul_ commented on Egg whites can be transformed into a material capable of filtering microplastics   phys.org/news/2022-11-egg... · Posted by u/wglb
mcv · 3 years ago
The title just mentions microplastics, but the first line of the article says:

> a way to turn your breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

So salt too? Isn't that way more impressive than microplastics? Could this lead to cheap desalination?

kul_ · 3 years ago
But then, how will you separate salt from microplastics?
kul_ commented on HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know   rachelbythebay.com/w/2021... · Posted by u/atg_abhishek
jiggawatts · 5 years ago
Many people think that they live in a free democracy.

In reality, something like 50% of all working people are employed in a strict hierarchical organisation that is essentially feudal in its nature.

Most employees are the equivalent of serfs, overseen by lords, with a king in charge. The common employees don't get a vote. Their managers are not elected. They don't get a say in policy. The managers in turn form a strict hierarchy, much like in feudal times, with a top-down structure. A junior manager cannot say no to a senior manager. Nobody can say no to the CEO.

In this picture HR is essentially the inquisition. The inquisition was most certainly not the friend of the common man!

If you buck the system, if you step out of your place, if you're a commoner upsetting a lord, then you will be treated much like your ancestors would have been treated long ago: You will be put to the question. The inquisition will spare no pain to determine exactly why you stepped out of line and upset the natural order of things.

kul_ · 5 years ago
Cynical but sadly true.

u/kul_

KarmaCake day364March 23, 2013View Original