general

Wolf Richter actually read Paypal's new privacy policy and the message in the fine print is Beware.

When you get on a PayPal site or use its services, it collects “information sent to us by your computer, mobile phone or other access device.” This “includes but is not limited to” (so these are just examples): “data about the pages you access, computer IP address, device ID or unique identifier, device type, geo-location information, computer and connection information, mobile network information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, and standard web log data and other information.”

You read correctly: “and other information” – anything it can get.

PayPal also collects personal data by putting cookies, web beacons (“to identify our users and user behavior”), and “similar technologies” on your device so that you can be tracked 24/7 even if you’re not using PayPal’s services, and even if you’re not on any of its sites.

Wait, “similar technologies?” By clicking on another link, you find out that they include pernicious “flash cookies,” newfangled “HTML 5 cookies,” and undefined “other web application software methods.” Unlike cookies, they “can operate across all of your browsers.” And you can’t get rid of these spy technologies or block them through your browser the way you get rid of or block cookies. You have to jump through hoops to deal with them, if they can be dealt with at all.

In addition, PayPal sweeps up any information “from or about you in other ways,” such as when you contact customer support and tell them stuff, or when you respond to a survey (Just Say No), or when you interact “with members of the eBay Inc. corporate family or other companies.” Yup, it sweeps up information even when you interact with other companies!

It may also “obtain information about you from third parties such as credit bureaus and identity verification services.” And it may “evaluate your computer, mobile phone or other access device to identify any malicious software or activity.” So they’re snooping around your devices.

And when you download or use PayPal’s apps to your smartphone, or access its “mobile optimized sites,” it collects location data along with a host of other data on your mobile device, including the unique identifier that ties it to you personally in order to manipulate search results and swamp you with location-based advertising “and other personalized content,” or whatever.

After vacuuming up all this information “from or about you,” PayPal will then “combine your information with information we collect from other companies” and create a voluminous, constantly growing dossier on you that you will never be able to check into.

Who all gets your personal information that PayPal collects? You guessed it.

This is dire.

With Microsoft you get the nerd in the blazer and with Apple you get the annoying hipster but they're both horrible.
A few words on Microsoft's ending of security updates for Windows XP yesterday.
Microsoft loves to say XP's a twelve year old operating system, as if that's a persuasive reason to stop supporting it.
Ars Technica estimates it's on the devices of "28 percent of the Web-using public." Cutting this percentage loose will increase malware and botnets.
Also, consider this scenario:
A person buys a PC in April 2009 for professional audio production. His Windows options are XP and Vista. Vista is buggy for audio production so the sales staff recommends XP.
Five years later, Microsoft cuts off support for XP and recommends, as an alternative, buying a newer PC.
This is planned obsolescence, supposedly a bad thing honest companies don't do.

Barry Ritholtz on the Facebook purchase of Oculus VR (maker of virtual reality headsets or something equally '90s-retro stupid):

What did the KickStarter funders of Oculus get? Note I use "funder" and not "investor," because investors have a potential for an investment return. These funders, who backed the company three months after the JOBS Act passed, did not. As the Journal noted, they were promised “a sincere thank you from the Oculus team.” And, for $25, a T-shirt. For $300, the dangle of “an early developer kit” including a prototype headset. Total money raised: $2.4 million from 9,500 contributors.

Talking people out of $2.4 million dollars in exchange for zero percent equity is a perfectly legal scam. Then selling the company for $2 billion dollars is simply how this particular crowdfunding works.

This Anthony Antonellis GIF was Art F City's "GIF of the Day," but why? It's kind of the standard blitzkrieg of data: approximately 50 GIFs, represented by only a few frames each, that move in space as well as time. But the spatial movement isn't particularly noteworthy -- it goes diagonally down, straight up, diagonally down, and straight up. An uninspiring zigzag gesture, filling up space as it goes. The frames go too fast for the mind to absorb, even on repeat viewings, but we see some obvious net-ish signifiers: Britney, QR code, alien head, a Francoise Gamma (?) gif. What are we left with? More noise, more useless information, dazzling but ultimately joyless.

Some have declared GIFs "over" and yet, this trend never got much of an intelligent airing. There were a few essays, and the show Art F City did where some yelling occurred after one of its premises was churlishly questioned by a participating artist. The point was to have some critical traction for these slippery modern ephemera. Not sure if "GIF of the Day" or ladder competitions do that.

Corinna Kirsch and Paddy Johnson liveblogged yesterday's portions of the Rhizome.org fundraising telethon (which is still in progress overnight) and Kirsch raised a question about my segment, specifically regarding an artist's use of Google. Just for clarification, here's a link to the text I was reading aloud (the slightly smoother blog version) about a Javier Morales post on Nasty Nets. Petra Cortright showed this Morales post when we did the Net Aesthetics 2.0 panel in 2008. Thanks to Kirsch for her notes and commentary. At 12:38 pm EST she wrote, about my reading of my Rhizome comments aloud: "Funny that comments originally thought of as vitriolic seem tame when read aloud from a binder. I’d like to see all these comments in a book." She also noted: "Rhizome’s Zachary Kaplan asks if reading the old comments brings up old emotions at the time. Tom says it actually does come back in a 'horrible rush.'" Kaplan also asked if I workshopped the comments before posting them -- if only.
Rhizome's editor Michael Connor preceded me as a telethon presenter and wrote this post, while the camera was rolling, during his hour of screen time. Once I got home and had a chance to read it, I replied in the comments to his thoughts about comments. Both he and Kirsch note the sad passing of the comment torch from blogs and/or listServs to "social" (meaning Facebook and Twitter).
As of this writing, Rhizome is only about $700 short of its $20,000 fundraising goal -- you could still kick in.

Twitter feedback:

@tommoody is holding a bounded media object live on #rhizome (let's unpack that joke: UmThatsMyLuggag connected someone's phrase from that 2008 panel to this binder):

new daytime drinking game, everytime @tommoody sez "blogger" take a drink (Nicholas O'Brien -- wish I could have)

Update: Kirsch also noted that the sound was intermittent -- I watched some of the YouTube later and confirmed. In case you were following and my voice cut out just as several carefully developed lines of argument were coming together into a piquant punchline, the comments can all be read here.