Safari has been doing that for quite some time.

And I hate it.

Having said that, clicking in the address bar brings the whole address back. But I don't want it hidden in the first place.

1) Straw=man argument.

2) Repeat for the third time: YOU need an app. THEY don't. I get that this was awkwardly worded, but read the whole thing.

3) That's right, it doesn't go to Google. But Google was the whole point of what I wrote. So: another straw man. Further, courts have increasingly been ruling that even police need a warrant for that.

4) Apparently you are ignoring Google's history, because you wrote "I feel like I can trust this."

I know quite well how it works, as I have already established. Despite your efforts you haven't "corrected" me on a single point.

Nor have I been "shouting".

Not even in most of those.

Last I checked the stats, fully 80% of the U.S. has no real alternative to their ONE local cable company for broadband internet.

Even worse: the big cable companies, like Comcast and Spectrum, have those parts of the U.S. divided up into "non-compete zones", in which one company has pretty much exclusive domain over the whole area.

Which is illegal as hell. Anti-trust laws haven't been taken off the books. But far too often these days they have been ignored.

1) Not BS. It's on my own phone. Without my consent.

2) No, you do not need an app on top of this. I addressed that already. The app is to give YOU information. Not to collect it.

3) No, they don't already have my location data. At least, I haven't given them my consent to have it, it's not in their TOS that they can collect it without my consent, and I have all location settings turned off.

4) You can feel like you can trust anything you like. If you want to ignore Google's history in regard to things like this, feel free. Doesn't bother me a bit.

I already said that in my previous post: the app is for your use, not theirs. Who are you shouting at?

"Even better" but not by much.

And you neglect to mention that N100 are a lot more expensive.

The masks they are referring to here aren't even N95. They're just to prevent you from coughing/sneezing droplets directly on other people.

So... you can use the one I mentioned using reflected sunlight or even streetlight or yard lights.

That's completely passive too.

They don't need government. If you're on Android, you probably already have it.

Without your consent.

Go to Settings > Google Settings and see if it says "COVID-19 Exposure Notifications" at the top.

To turn it off, hit the 3-dot menu button, then "Usage & diagnostics" and turn it off.

Apparently the app you download is only used to give you information about it. They collect the data regardless.

If that's wrong, someone by all means correct me. But don't just tell me what Google says. They're not trustworthy.

Doesn't help.

An equivalent technique -- actually, it's arguably much better -- is to bounce a light beam (preferably IR) or laser off of any window.

Better, because you have a much larger surface area and the vibrations should be more pronounced.

As someone else mentioned, the technique has been around a long time. In fact an article describing how to do it for just a few dollars was published in Scientific American in the late 70s, early 80s.

Oops... Slashdot made it look like you were replying to me.

Ignore my comment above.

"BS" is easy to say, harder to back up.

As someone who has been programming online systems for decades now, I think I have some idea of what I'm talking about.

No, it is not.

While for some reason I had changed the subject from online to "mail-in" voting, this system is exactly as anonymous as in-person voting. No more, no less.

Or rather, in one sense it is more anonymous: your face isn't visible to anyone with a camera.

Yes, true.

It was late, and for some reason I was thinking it said "mail-in voting". My brains must have been temporarily scrambled.

But then I would have to argue that those aren't real social interaction.

You'd probably be wrong.

Online systems today are unconscionably fragile and prone to vulnerabilities.

They are too complex. And the tools used and components from which they are built are often not sufficiently audited for security.

Here is an example: one of the most popular software libraries used today for encrypted logins, called "bcrypt", went for years without being thoroughly audited by cryptographers.

In fact, the authors stated that "we hope" the additional key-generation rounds they implemented in order to slow down its operation did not introduce new vulnerabilities.

And it was reasonable to think so, considering the way it was built. But hope and thinking so just don't cut it when it comes to cryptography.

In fact I'm still not sure whether bcrypt has, in fact, been thoroughly cryptographically audited.

That's similar to what I said above.