So I got out some CF cards and noticed something odd about this one. Do you see the weirdness?

How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?
So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.

They're definitely not USB.
And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.
https://t.co/mYfFMy1qdX
It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such
But back in the early 2000s Lexar made the jumpSHOT CF cards and the jumpSHOT CF adapter, which was very small and cheap for a USB CF card adapter...
and it turns out this is because
1. it only works with jumpSHOT CF cards with the "USB enabled" logo on them
2. THERE'S NOTHING INSIDE IT
CF cards inherently need a microcontroller on them to be able to work, and normally your CF card adapter similarly has a microcontroller that converts between ATA and USB...
But that's two microcontrollers. Why not save money and just have one?
so for jumpSHOT, Lexar just built USB support into the microcontroller on the CF card itself, and bundled them with cheap adapters that just physically adapt the USB connector to some pins on the CF card.
the only issue would be if you tried to use a non-jumpSHOT CF card on a jumpSHOT reader.
it wouldn't work at all.

Hopefully Lexar figured out a way to either make that mechanically impossible (I don't think so) or at least safe

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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Mashing the Bernie meme; Know Nothings, conspiratorialism and Pastel Q; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/cKWPSzuYHE

#Pluralistic

1/


Mashing the Bernie meme: What if every video game, except Bernie with mittens?

https://t.co/Zcs71oUras

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Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.