blah64

Whatever the reason, why do they need such info for local files? My cable company doesn't know what I play from my Mac to an iDevice or TV. And, it isn't so much that any one of these places know that info... but it can start to get dangerous once aggregated. So, when those companies sell that data to Equifax, Google, Facebook, etc. pretty soon they know more about me than I do. Next the data gets leaked, and now all the criminals of the world know more about me than I do (including the big 3-letter ones).

Indeed.  Way more of this sharing happens than people understand.  If you think Equifax is bad, look up Experian.  No single piece of data is necessarily a huge deal, but as you say, aggregation and disaggregation is where it's at these days.

jbdragon said:

As a lone time now Lifetime PLEX member, I'm a huge PLEX fan. I'm streaming PLEX on my Apple TV 4 all the time. I have access to my Music anywhere. It really works so well. I'll check out Plexamp. Not sure if I'd use it much, but still,....

Then you'd know... does all this stuff run off-line? Or, do you have to have a connection to the Internet (and Plex) for it to work? (I'm fine if it connects from time to time, but it seemed to not work at all w/o a live Internet connection.)

There's no way that should be happening/required, but it shows the kind of mindset many devs have these days.  Then again, same thing is happening on half the apps you likely have on your phone, sadly.  People just aren't aware of it.  It's not just the app makers that get the data, but many data mining libraries they embed from other companies.  It's sick.

Consider something like Kodi (was XBMC) as a media player.  It can do streaming if you like, but you can also use it 100% as a local media player, which is what I do, and it works great for my purposes.  It's lightweight, can easily run on an old Mac mini, for example, or even on a Raspberry Pi.

gsteeno said:

chasm said:

... As far as I can tell, Plexamp is just a player -- and one that requires you to sign in to (or create a) Plex account before you can use it, so that's strike one right there -- what's that for? Oh right, collecting data on what is listened to and who knows what else. "Free" app. ...Possibly I'm missing something, since I'm not going to allow the app to spy on me, ....

Good Lord. Take off the tin-foil hat. Do you think Plex (maliciously) cares what you're listening to? And why stop there? Call out your cable company for spying on what you watch or browse, or your credit card provider for seeing how much you spend on groceries, or AppleInsider for tracking your posts. We're living in the information age. You might have to make peace with that.

Good lord is right.  Listen to yourself.

Plex may or may not care what you're listening to, but you know damn well that other streaming services all want to have that data about you so they can build better personality profiles of their users.  And if you think they don't sell/share/trade this data you are woefully naive.  There is absolutely no reason they need to have an always-connected link to their servers for local playback.

And cable companies spying on what you watch or browse?  You do know that it's *illegal* for them to gather data on what you watch on TV, right?  Why is that?  Because it's flat out not friggin' okay for companies to do shit like that.  It's so not okay that it's illegal.  And as for them watching everything that goes in and out of the internet to your house, that's what the FCC just relaxed laws on and something like 26 states have immediately started putting plans in place to re-enact laws to make that illegal again as well.  You picked some really BAD examples, but that's what lazy people do...

Let's continue with your poor examples.  Is it really okay that credit/debit companies are able to see not just what you spend on groceries, but exactly what you buy, how much you buy, when you buy them, where you buy them, etc?  You're really okay with that?  Because multiple CEOs of data mining companies have gone on public record saying that when they buy alcohol or unhealthy foods they use cash to avoid being tracked.  I guess you're smarter than they are -- NOT.

There is no peace to be made with this crap, it's the ugly part of the information age, and it will only change when consumers stop bending over and taking it in the ass every single day because they're too lazy to do anything about it.

As for this topic, it's pretty disgusting how this went down, and a lot of people are going to regret supporting it.  As Eric said above, the telcos spent a ton of time, effort and money to lobby very hard to get this passed.  They didn't do that without a plan.  If there's one thing people need to remember, it's that.

I also agree that we won't see it all at once.  In the same way that facebook and google slowly and insidiously push their limits all the time, the telcos will carefully test the waters around the edges, and slowly push their ability to price-discriminate in as many ways and as much as they can get away with before their customers revolt.  The problem is, as many have already said, without adequate competition in a given market, there really isn't any effective way for the customers to revolt.  They can't just take their business elsewhere, and they can't do without.  That's the definition of a powerful monopoly right there.  Certainly at some theoretical level there is always the possibility of competition, but it's infeasible in reality in many markets for another company to come in and "save the day".

boltsfan17 said:

I deleted that comment
.....

I used to be able to delete/edit comments, but I haven't seen that option for quite some time.  What/where am I missing?  I'll check to see if it's a timer thing now.  If this comment sticks around, then I wasn't able to delete it.

[update] apparently my settings or something in my configuration has changed, because I see the gear icon now, with the 4 hour edit window link.  I know for a fact it wasn't there in the past when I wanted to make edits.  Hmm.

beowulfschmidt said:

blah64 said:

Ignoring these presumably temporary rollout problems, is APC finally going to allow anonymous cashless transactions? i.e., can one create an APC account via a pre-paid gift card without any real, personally-identifying data? Once funds are on the account, it seems at that point any point-of-sale purchases would be completely anonymous, almost as good as cash. Or is this not possible yet?

I see that someone later replied to you regarding the pre-paid gift card capability, but I'm going to address your "completely anonymous" comment.

iMessage is attached to your phone and knows your phone number, and probably your email address.  No matter the anonymity of the card used to pay, the fact of the transaction itself is not anonymous. Whether or not the details of the transaction can be discerned is another question, but the fact of the transaction is, or can be, known.

So unless you're willing to go to a lot of trouble, i.e. buying an iPhone with cash, declining to give any personal information to the seller, using a new Apple ID unconnected with any of your other accounts, using a pay-as-you-go carrier such as Cricket or StraightTalk, never attaching the phone to your home wi-fi, never actually bringing your phone to your residence or workplace (tower triangulation is a thing), never calling or texting with your family members, and a few other precautions, you ain't gonna be anonymous.

Hey, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

Thanks for the info, but I've already considered all the things you mentioned (and more).  Phone was indeed purchased with cash, via craigslist.  The appleID I use on that device is completely unassociated with any real-world person/data.  Better than pay-as-you-go, I don't have any cell service on this phone at all, it's basically a wonderful large-screen iPodTouch with touchID.  As for never attaching to my home wifi, I do, but it sits behind a firewall that severely limits what servers it can reach; i.e. not even Apple.  Because it has been in airplane mode since the day I purchased it, I'm not worried about triangulation tracking.  Obviously, without cell service I don't call or text anyone.  I don't use iMessage, but because it doesn't require a phone number, I did set it up at one point to do some testing, so I know it works.

I'm always bothered when I hear so-called privacy advocates talk about how annoyed they are with various human behavior profiling services that they use.  I'm not hypocritical, I talk the talk and I walk the walk.  This is but a fraction of the stuff I pay attention to.  And yes, convenience is the enemy of privacy, so some of what I do is inconvenient, but it's not that bad when it's baked into your life.  It's a trade off, and I'm not comfortable playing into the hands of data miners.

So back to the issue at hand.  I'm still interested in whether this will work with a pre-paid debit card and/or as a place for others to send funds without being associated with a "named" debit card.  Mostly I'm looking on as an observer, and probably wouldn't use it much in any case, but I'd like to know what the full range of options are.  Remember in the early days of the iTunes store, most people assumed that you needed to attach the account to a real/named credit card, but it was possible to bypass that whole process and simply use iTunes gift cards, which I continue to do to this day.  So until someone actually digs in on this, I don't think we know for sure what's possible.  Unless there's a URL someone can point me to that says otherwise.

And the adage you wrote at the end of your post is so true.  It should be the motto for the 2010s.