cypherpunks

What the people here saying this "seems legit" are really saying is that, if the site is providing DRM content which you want to see, then it is indeed using this for its intended purpose (which is to prevent you from recording and/or retransmitting the stream). This is true, but, it doesn't mean that the site isn't also collecting your device identifiers and using them for some nefarious privacy-invasive purposes. And of course, they most likely are.

So if I were you I would look for a pirated streaming website instead of running this proprietary software to watch a DRM'd stream. (The pirated site will probably also be privacy-invasive, but they won't get your device ID... and you're more likely to be able to block its ads.)

in my experience DeepL has the best results for some language pairs while Google is better for others (and has a lot more languages).

But, these days I'm happy to say Firefox translate is the first thing I try and it is often sufficient. I mostly only try the others now when the Firefox result doesn't make sense or the language is unsupported.

Yeah, that would make sense - language detection is trivial and can be done with a small statistical model; nothing as complicated as a neural network is needed, i think just looking at bigram frequency is accurate enough when you have more than a few words.

If that is what is happening, and it is only leaking the language pair to the server the first time that pair is needed, that would be nice... I wish they made it clear if that is what is happening 😢

Probably that’s when it does online connection?

since the help says it is downloading "partial language files" automatically, and the button never changes from "Download" to "Remove" if you don't click Download, logically it must sometimes need to download more of a language which you have previous downloaded a "partial language file" of.

i am curious if the choice of which parts of the "language file" (aka model) it is downloading really does not reveal anything about the text you're translating; i suspect it most likely does reveal something about the input text to the server... but i'm not motivated enough to research it further at the moment.

Wow, thanks for the about:translations tip - I was wondering how to do that!

Besides "Translate page" there is also a "Translate selection" option in the right-click menu so you can translate part of a page.

However, unless you download languages in the "Translation" section of Firefox preferences, it doesn't actually always work while offline:

As you pointed out, the help page explicitly says there is "no privacy risk of sending text to third parties for analysis because translation happens on your device, not externally", but, after I translate something in a new language I haven't before, it still doesn't appear as downloaded (eg having a "Remove" button instead of a "Download" button) in the preferences.

The FAQ has a question Why do I need to install languages? with this answer:

Installing languages enables Firefox to perform translations locally within your browser, prioritizing your privacy and security. As you translate, Firefox downloads partial language files as you need them. To pre-install complete languages yourself, access the language settings in Firefox Settings, General panel, in the Language and Appearance section under Translations.

I wonder what the difference between the "partial" language files and the full download is, and if that is really not leaking any information about the text being translated. In doing a few experiments just now, I certainly can't translate to new languages while offline, but after I've translated one paragraph in a language I do seem to be able to translate subsequent paragraphs while offline. 🤔

Anyway, it probably is a good idea to click "Download" on all the languages you want to be able to translate.

I can do this if you’re busy, just give me mod privs.

done

the bald guy in the middle of the photo owns the servers that Signal outsources the keeping of their privacy promises to 🤔

aircraft for example

due to DO-178C requirements, Linux can't be used there... yet.

What you want is not an "uncensored" server, but rather a server that is moderated in a way that you find acceptable.

There is no such thing as an "uncensored/open" server. Or, when there is, it can't last long. Every open server needs to delete some things, because if they don't, their disk will soon be full of spam and CSAM and then the server will go away. Some servers claiming to be "uncensored" might allow nearly everything besides those two categories, but they tend to quickly become nazi bars.

Sorry i don't have any specific suggestion, but of the 61 servers listed here hopefully there is one with a moderation policy that is to your liking.

he’s not been going around spouting stuff about people’s races making them superior or inferior to others

you mean like this? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-white-supremacy-racehorse-theory-1064928/

In finder you cannot cut files

I thought you could when I last used it, back when it was called Mac OS X, so I just searched and TIL they removed cmd-X for files in 2015, but, you actually can still cut files; it's just another hidden keyboard shortcut now: after you copy a file with cmd-C you can retroactively make it a cut when pasting by typing cmd-option-V instead of cmd-V. Intuitive, no?

maybe showing him this would help?