Hi all,

I don’t really know how to ask this question. On one of my devices, I downloaded a web browser (Opera) and one of my friends made fun of me, saying that “you better like China knowing all the stuff you do online”.

I read the Opera website and it says it’s a Norwegian company, but on Wikipedia it does say it was bought by a Chinese company.

My question is: what does “China” do with my personal browsing data? Why is it useful for them? (and who are we referring to here, is that the Chinese government, a private company, who?)

I’m looking forward to learn more about digital privacy, but I don’t currently understand the “obviousness” of how it is wrong to use Opera.

I’m a tech enthusiast (hence why I’m here), but I’m cognizant that I have large knowledge gaps in some of these topics.

Thank you in advance.

Some of my coworkers were talking about using RSS to read blogs, which made some of the younger folks in our team ask what it is and why we keep using it.

Some still use iPods to avoid subscriptions and streaming services, my favorite was one of our sysadmins who showed me Gopher.

I’m curious about others though, thanks!

What kind of websites did people visit? Were people friendly?

Excerpt from Chapter 14 of In Our Time. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1925.

Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes the bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn went all the way through him and he felt it go into the sand. Some one had the bull by the tail. They were swearing at him and flopping the cape in his face. Then the bull was gone. Some men picked Maera up and started to run with him toward the barriers through the gate out the passageway around under the grandstand to the infirmary. They laid Maera down on a cot and one of the men went out for the doctor. The others stood around. The doctor came running from the corral where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead.

She worked in Guerrero, a few streets down from Julian's, and she was seventeen and had lost a son. The memory made her cry in that Hotel Trébol room, spacious and dark, with bath and bidet, the perfect place to live out a few years. The perfect place to write a book of apocryphal memories or a collection of horror poems. Lupe was thin and had legs long and spotted like a leopard. The first time, I didn't even get an erection and I didn't want to have an erection. Lupe spoke of her life and of what for her, was happiness. When a week had passed we saw each other again. I found her on a corner alongside other little teenage whores, propped against the fender of an old Cadillac. I think we were glad to see each other. From then on lupe began telling me things about her life sometimes crying, sometimes fucking almost always naked in bed, staring at the ceiling hand in hand. Her son was born sick and Lupe promised La Virgen she'd leave her trade if her baby were cured. She kept her promise a month or two then had to go back. Soon after, her son died and Lupe said the fault was her own for not keeping up her bargain with La Virgen. La Virgen carried off the little angel, as payment for a broken promise. I didn't know what to say. I liked children sure, but I still had many years before I'd know what it was to have a son. And so I stayed quiet and thought about the eerie feel emerging from the silence of that hotel. Either the walls were very thick or we were the sole occupants or the others didn't open their mouths, not even to moan. It was so easy to ride Lupe and feel like a man and feel wretched. It was easy to get her in your rhythm and it was easy to listen as she prattled on about the latest horror films she'd seen at the Bucareli theatre. Her leopard legs would wrap around my waist and she'd sink her head into my chest searching for my nipples or my heartbeat. This is the part of you I want to suck, she said to me one night. What, Lupe? Your heart.