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		<title>Proprietary pedometers &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/08-August/15.xhtml&gt;</title>
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		<header>
			<h1>Proprietary pedometers</h1>
			<p>Day 00527: Monday, 2016 August 15</p>
		</header>
<p>
	For some reason, the power washer is failing today.
	The motor keeps shutting off and turning back on in quick succession.
	If I try to wash the porch with it, I&apos;ll probably end up burning out the motor.
	I should have finished cleaning the porch yesterday when the darn thing was working ...
</p>
<p>
	I ended up going to a grocery store today, one of those stupid ones that charges you more if you don&apos;t carry a tracking card and allow them to chain your purchases together so that they can build a profile of you.
	My go-to solution for that is to pick up a new tracking card every time that I go in.
	That way, they don&apos;t charge me more, but as I only use each tracking card once, they aren&apos;t able to build any sort of profile on me.
	They allow one to use these cards unregistered, which I always do, but sometimes, they ask me to register them in-store.
	When that happens, I show them that their system won&apos;t allow me to register without a telephone number, so as I have no telephone number to give them, I cannot register.
	However, this time, the system actually <strong>*did*</strong> allow me to register! Mission accomplished.
	Maybe.
	I&apos;d been dealing with the stupid registration form in Coos Bay, but the one that allowed me to register was in Springfield.
	It could be that they actually fixed their form to not demand a telephone number or it could be that these two stores are using different forms for registration.
	I&apos;m really hoping for the former.
	I doubt that my complaints alone got them to fix it, but perhaps I wasn&apos;t the only one complaining.
</p>
<p>
	My mother arrived home, but it doesn&apos;t sound like they think that their interview went well.
	That&apos;s disappointing.
</p>
<p>
	I handed the two main mobile pamphlets to them and said that I also had more options if they didn&apos;t like those two, but that those two were the best options available in my opinion.
	They were happy to have the plans in writing as they had wanted, but it turns out that they are going to use them to try to haggle with Verizon! They&apos;re not interested at all in switching service providers any more, and think that Verizon can somehow be reasoned with if shown that there are much better deals available.
	I doubt that Verizon will budge much, if at all, so now I guess I&apos;ll wait for that plan to fail.
	There might still be hope of getting my mother to leave Verizon.
	If they don&apos;t, they&apos;ll continue paying through the nose for a restrictive mobile plan.
</p>
<p>
	I found (and reported) a strange bug in <a href="https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/">Duck Duck Go</a>.
	When you search for the term &quot;user agent&quot;, Duck Duck Go displays the contents of your Web browser&apos;s <abbr title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr> User-Agent header.
	However, if your Web browser doesn&apos;t send a User-Agent header, Duck Duck Go instead displays a seemingly-random User-Agent string.
	Every time that you refresh the search page, a new User-Agent string is displayed, and they look like actual User-Agent strings used by different clients running on different operating systems.
	My best guess is that when a client requests the page and sends a User-Agent header, the contents of that header are copied into a persistent variable.
	However, when no User-Agent header is sent, the variable isn&apos;t erased; instead, nothing happens.
	Next, when one performs a search that triggers Duck Duck Go&apos;s User-Agent string display, it shows the contents of that variable.
	But why is the variable persistent? That part makes no sense to me.
	There&apos;s no reason to save the contents of the User-Agent header after the page has been sent to the client.
</p>
<p>
	The <a href="https://www.torproject.org./">Tor Project</a> teeshit team finally got back to me after four months.
	By now though, my node is down, so they couldn&apos;t find it to verify it.
	I explained that I&apos;m in the process of a move and have no Internet connection.
	I can&apos;t run a node without an Internet connection.
	FreedomPop also finally got back to me, but it&apos;s too late to cancel the order because the <abbr title="subscriber identity module">SIM</abbr> card has already been sent.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;ve been invited to a new <abbr title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</abbr> network, one that offers both <abbr title="Transport Layer Security">TLS</abbr> and an onion address! <a href="ircs://xopo4w4zpyw2u43n.onion:6697/">Umbrellix</a> is still a small network, but it should be a nice place to hang out now that I&apos;m not on Volatile.
</p>
<p>
	My old domain registrar asked for feedback after having closed my issue yesterday.
	As they were refusing to stop charging my credit card for services that I can&apos;t access, I left them very poor feedback.
	What did they expect? A new representative got in touch with me today about the poor feedback and tried once more to get me to produce a notarized letter proving my identity because photo <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> is somehow not good enough.
	I had been unable to access the Web page on which the discussion had supposedly been happening (I needed login credentials but lacked any), so I&apos;d been replying via email, which posted to that page for me.
	The new representative today noticed that my emails had a signature mentioning my <abbr title="Pretty Good Privacy">PGP</abbr> key, so the representative tried to appeal to my clear appreciation of security, saying that the noterized letter was really needed to make sure that someone that didn&apos;t own the domains was.
	I relied in no uncertain terms that this &quot;security&quot; feature wasn&apos;t really all that secure, then proceeded to explain that it doesn&apos;t even matter if I own the domains, as I own the credit card.
	I haven&apos;t asked for access to the domains, I just want my card to stop getting charged.
	My response is below.
	I&apos;ve redacted the names for privacy.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Hello, [REDACTED: current representative]!
</p>
<p>
	I do appreciate security, but your &quot;security&quot; mechanism makes no sense.
	You (or rather, [REDACTED: other representative]) said that photo ID can be forged.
	However, it seems like a notary document would be easier to forge (as [REDACTED: other representative] said that any of a number of people could legally produce it) than state-issued photo ID.
	Furthermore, I have no intention of needlessly having more identity documents (such as this notary document) created.
	There already exist too many identity documents for everyone in the States.
	You want my photo ID? You got it.
	You want my birth certificate? You got it.
	You want my Social Security card? Well, I guess that that one&apos;s a bit sensitive, but you get the point.
</p>
<p>
	Ignoring the refund for a moment, you have no reason to continue charging my card from this point on.
	I&apos;ve let you know that I cannot access my account.
	I clearly am the one in charge of the card, even if I&apos;m somehow not the one in charge of the domains, as I have pulled up the record of all three charges that you made to my card over the past year.
	I can even provide a copy of my credit card statement to prove that I&apos;m actually the card holder if you like.
	I&apos;m not asking that you give me access to the domains.
	I&apos;m asking as the card holder, not the domain holder, that you simply stop charging my card.
	If you want, send a warning email to the email address that you have on file letting them know that auto-renew is disabled and that they can re-enable it with a different credit/debit card.
	This letter will hit an inbox that no one has access any more, but due diligence might demand that you make an effort to at least try.
</p>
<p>
	So is it ICANN that is saying that photo ID won&apos;t work? If that&apos;s the case, it&apos;s either a new rule or Gandi.net is in breach of it.
	Either way, it doesn&apos;t really matter.
	ICANN is the same group that says that I can&apos;t own a domain under a gTLD just because I don&apos;t have telephone service, despite the fact that telephone service is in no way related to domain name ownership.
	Their rules often don&apos;t make sense; I see no reason for me to bend over backwards to meet their whims.
</p>
<p>
	If it is truly ICANN&apos;s decision that a notarized document must be provided, then I understand that this is not in any way [REDACTED: domain registrar]&apos;s fault and there is nothing that [REDACTED: domain registrar] can do.
	However, I hope that you understand that creating additional unnecessary identity documents is in no way acceptable in my opinion.
	If the only thing that I can do is have Discover revoke authorization for you to charge me further by following through with a charge dispute, then that is what I clearly have to do.
</p>
<p>
	Thank you for your time,<br/>
[REDACTED: my legal name, present in the whois records]
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	My mother uses a strange pedometer to track their walking habits.
	They try to walk at least ten thousand steps each day, which is strange considering that they&apos;re against being a pedestrian.
	They do want to keep their health up though, and their family&apos;s poor health scares them.
	Vanessa, Cyrus (before Cyrus left for Gresham), and I tend to go out on our mother&apos;s walks with them.
	The pedometer that my mother uses doesn&apos;t have a screen though.
	You cannot tell how many steps you&apos;ve taken without another device.
	The pedometer can sync up with either a mobile device or a Windows/OS X machine, but in all of these cases, it needs a proprietary application to do so and sens that data to the company over the Internet.
	Add that to the fact that the pedometer records not only footstep data but also heart rate throughout the day and sleeping habits and you have one creepy pedometer that I couldn&apos;t use even if I wanted to.
	Several times, my mother has asked if we&apos;ve wanted some ourselves.
	Vanessa has shown some interest, but every time, I say that I do not want one.
	I don&apos;t give any reasons, as my mother would take it as an attack, but I always say &quot;no&quot;.
	Once more, our mother asked if I was interested in having one, so I gave a strong &quot;no&quot;.
	I thought nothing of the event until later, when our mother gave one to Vanessa.
	As it turns out, our mother had bought Vanessa and I each one, though I hadn&apos;t been made aware that the pedometers had already been boughten until just then.
	I&apos;m not sure why my mother would have bought me one when I always tell them that I&apos;m not interested.
	I even downloaded a pedometer that runs on my mobile alone on our last walk! My mother said that it wasn&apos;t too late if I decided I wanted one, so I explained that those things weren&apos;t compatible with my system.
	I left out the part about how creepy they are, and simply said that they are only Windows- and OS X-compatible.
	They said that they thought that I had a smartphone, as if the thing could sync with any smartphone, so I explained that it might be compatible with my stupid carrier-provided device, but there was no way that it would sync with my good device once that arrives in the mail.
	I&apos;d been thinking that syncing would require the proprietary software that&apos;s only available with a Google account and the Google Play services software installed on the device, but when I thought about it later, I came to a better realization.
	Even if I used some service that bypasses the Google Play Store (and I have seen a few of those available), the pedometer syncs over bluetooth.
	Replicant isn&apos;t bluetooth-compatible.
	Vanessa seemed to be pretending to like theirs, though they didn&apos;t seem to actually like it.
	I asked about that once I got the chance, and it seems that Vanessa was very exited about the thing at first, but was beyond disappointed (going so far as to say that they now hated the pedometer) once they came to the realization that they weren&apos;t going to actually be able to see their step count.
	Vanessa&apos;s on Debian like I am and their mobile device is an actual telephone, not a mini tablet computer that people mistakingly refer to as a telephone (Vanessa hates touch screens).
	That device isn&apos;t going to run any sort of synchronization application, nor will it display the step count.
	If this thing ran using free software, surely someone would have modified it to work on Linux by now.
	This is one of the costs of proprietary software and why it needs to be avoided.
	As long as there is a demand for it, proprietary software will continue to thrive and continue to put up barriers to accessibility.
</p>
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